Cardboard Spaceship

Sister in Law turns Old Like the Rest of Us.

My Sister in Law, Mrs Spaceship's sister turned forty at the beginning of December, and so now all of the inlaws have nit the critical over forty mark.   (Actually, I think that her husband is not over forty yet, but that kinda ruins the title...)

So she had a party in London that we went to:

Abba themed, as you might be able to guess.  The twp girls sang very well, and did all of Abba, and then did a kind of general 70's disco tribute set.  Very good they were too, especially if you are old enough, like me, to remember it from the first time.

Here is a shot of Mrs Spaceship and her sister, which is about the best one I got, so you see the kind of party it turned into, in a very fun kind of way. 

The next generation all got to see each other too, and here they are fighting on the couch. 

Well, SSCOTA and his nearest cousin anyway. 

Just to dispel the notion that my wife and sister in law are deadly red eyed mutants, here is a much better picture of my now over 40 sister in law and her husband.     

The small one is one of theirs. 

So a good time, and now we can all look forward to being 50.  Bah.   

Cairo in (Bad) Pictures

As I had already mentioned I had been in Cairo the week before Xmas, which was interesting.  Travelled there on the Monday, painless flight via Zuerich to Cairo, and then got into a taxi to go into the centre.  What a ride, what a ride.  The travel in Cairo is absolutely bonkers. 

This is a rear view of a couple of the typical taxis - ancient Renaults and other marques over thirty or more years old, all with a cast iron roof rack. 

I had to negotiate the fare (apparently abut 80 Egyptian pounds is about right.)  Then off we went, and the driver hit the hyperspace button.  The main instrument of navigation is the horn, and the markings on the lanes are there for unknown and unknowable reasons.  As the saying going there are no atheists in foxholes, then there cannot be many in Egyptian taxis.  You literally have to make a leap of faith that the jolly nice chap in the driver's seat is going to manage the whole thing, and that you need simply to hold on in breathless wonderment. 

Then you arrive in Downtown Cairo, and it's a rambling ramshackle affair.  Here is a nice Lion on the end of one of the main bridges.

 

We had a meeting with one of the Egyptian banks, which was held in a big auditorium, and here is a picture of the team posing with the local flag.  Would you buy software off this lot?  Hope so...

Didn't really see that much of Cairo except from the Taxi window due to the frenetic nature of the vist and demo.  Did see this in the hotel lobby though.  The African continent's biggest chocolate Santa.  Really.

Slightly odd, but as you can see, it required a lot of passion and dedication. 

Quite. 

I enjoyed Cairo, and it certainly is like no other town I have visited. 

New Camera - Nikon - Avoid at All Costs

One of the reasons I have not been publishing many photos of late despite being in various interesting places is that I dropped my former trusty pocket camera, a reliable Casio that I bought for going to Dubai about 18 months or so ago, and mashed the USB port, rendering it pretty useless.

So I bought a Nikon Coolpix S225, thinking that its a reputable brand of camera, and should be perfectly functional.  Wrong, what a dog of a camera.  Piss poor lens, indifferent autofocus that seems to not work at all when there is insufficient light, and numerous other niggles.  Avoid at any price, even if it is relatively cheap.

Merry Atheist Children Get Presents Day

Its holiday season here in the Spaceship.  We have Dagran, and old family friends over for the festivities, which have been numerous and varied. 

Here is an executive summary from the Smallest Space Cadet of them All:

He got an Xbox 360 with Halo on it, and he just about burst with excitment.  He also chose to mark the occasion by dressing formally in Scottish regalia, here he is clutching his new copy of Halo. 

So a great time has been had by one and all, so enjoy, and I hope that you are having a good time too.   

Harry Hutton has some Pertinent Words for Tiger Woods.

Sitting here in a hotel in Cairo, which is enough to focus anyone's mind, recovering from the effects of trying to personally endanger the world's entire Shish Kebab population, whilst sitting in an agreeable restaurant overlooking the Nile. 

I have been reflecting on the state of the world, and given that much of this has been informed by really bad cable television in my room, this has revolved around Tiger Woods and his manifest infidelities. 

Seeking words of comfort from one of the great net prophets, Harry Hutton of "Chase Me Ladies, I am in the Cavalry," we come across the following great observation.

"Every adult must at some point have paused during some slapstick piece of debauchery and thought, "Christ, this is ridiculous". Having testicles is like being chained to the village idiot. Sad, but there it is."

Insight of this profundity is rare indeed.

Blogging light for this week, as I am in Cairo. It's totally bonkers, really just one of the most amazing cities I have visited, really quite different to anything else, and the taxi drivers make the "go to lightspeed" scenes in SciFi movies look like a tortoise on Qualudes. interesting to do business here too. Catch you after the jump, and what a jump it is.

Rings Around The Earth

A chap called Roy Prol has done an animation that shows what the Earth would be like if it had a ring system similar to Saturn's.  Very interesting little imagined scenario, and set to supernally beautiful music. 

The Fix is In, in Copenhagen

Didn't know whether to file this one under Environment, Tin Foil Hat, or World Economy, as it has elements of all three.   The Guardian, a very pro-green paper on the whole, has the story of a draft doing the rounds behind the scenes in Copenhagen, called the Danish Text. 

Why did I think about whether this is a conspiracy theory one or not, well, from the article.

"The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions."

In other words the existing UN process would be sidelined, and the money men are going to take it over.  Like that has to be the least surprising outcome in a long time.  The Banksters have found another way to screw the world, carbon trading and carbon trading derivatives. 

"Banks intend to become the intermediaries in this fledgling market. Although U.S. carbon legislation may not pass for a year or more, Wall Street has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiring lobbyists and making deals with companies that can supply them with “carbon offsets” to sell to clients."

According to Blythe Masters, at JPMC, the person who invented the Credit Default Swap, one of the things that we the taxpayer are now paying trillions for:

"Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says. Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity -- in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

“This requires a massive redirection of capital,” Masters says. “You can’t have a successful climate policy without the heavy, heavy involvement of financial institutions.”

Now, I have some genuine issues around the neutrality of the climate debate because of this kind of sudden involvement of the powerful vested interests of the banks and various other people who stand to gain.   To be clear, I think that the world is overpopulated, overpolluted, and we will have serious resource problems in the very near future.  This is why getting the allocation of resources, and the approach right is so utterly critical, because we're not going to get to go around again on this one.  

Still let's leave it to the Banksters to fix it in our best interests.  What could possible go wrong with that situation?

Oliver Postgate

Lovely interview in the Guardian, or at least extract of the autobiography of Oliver Postgate, the man behind Smallfilms, creator of such greats as Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, and my all time favourite from Childhood, the Clangers.

The clangers didn't speak they just whistled, so I was amused to read that when he wrote the scripts he had the Major saying things he might be better off not saying in a children's programme.

"He asked Ursula Eason of the BBC what they objected to in the scripts. She replied: ‘The bad language.’ I could only think of one piece of bad language.

One of the episodes begins with Major Clanger trying to open the big sliding doors of the main cave-mouth. It jams and his first line is: ‘Oh sod it! The bloody thing’s stuck again!’ ‘That’s it,’ Ursula said. ‘You know quite well we can’t say things like that on children’s programmes.’

But I said, ‘they don’t say it. They whistle it.’

‘But surely people will know?’ ‘If they have nice minds they will hear him say: “Oh dear me. The naughty thing is jammed again.”’

‘Oh, all right, then, but please keep the language moderate.’

Wonderful stuff.