Here Come the Cops

Sick of getting pulled over in your Evo VIII with a boring whoop whoop then you need to emigrate to the good ‘ol US of A where the cops beat box:

Ken Block’s Maximum Hoon Machine

I’ve blogged about the legendary Ken Block before.  Now he’s conjured up the ultimate hoon machine

Don’t try any of this at home!

Toyota’s Window to the World

Is there no end to the ingenuity of Japanese engineers

Amur Leopards

 

This wonderful footage of the terribly endangered Amur Leopard was shot in the Kedrovaya Pad nature reserve in Eastern Russia using a remote HD camera.

The Amur leopard is on the brink of extinction and footage like this can do a great deal to expose the fact and help its survival

Your New Boots Sir

It has been revealed that the MoD spent £714.18 getting a pair of non-urgent boots to a soldier in Northern Ireland. 

See http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/%C2%A3700-bill-to-deliver-soldier-boots

A bit steep really.  Surely it would have been cheaper to fly a civil servant to Ulster and deliver them by hand!  At least the MoD can account for them unlike the £6Billion of unaccounted for kit!

I wonder what other gems of procurement are waiting to be exposed?

I WANT ONE!

The first real turbine powered Batmobile in the World (not on the planet!)

 

That is so cool!

Rainbow Toad Rediscovered

The Rainbow Toad of Borneo has been rediscovered after 90 years.

Who knows what else may be lurking believed lost.

Who Owns the Countryside?

 

OR                                                           ??

            

The BBC is carrying an item on complaints by salmon fishermen about commercial rafting companies on the Tay disrupting their fishing.

This raises the interesting question as to who owns the countryside.  Not who has legal title but which of the many stakeholders has the most say in what happens to the the countryside and how it should be utilised.  Traditionally game interests, particularly in Scotland, and farmers have been the most powerful voices in this debate.  But as new ways of commercial exploitation have evolved, such as tourism and recreation, many of which are becoming more economically important, so the old assumptions about primacy give way to today’s debate about who can benefit the most.

Although I don’t know the figures it is conceivable that commercial rafting does or could generate more economic benefit on the Tay than fishing.  In which case, given that the two activities appear to be mutually incompatible who should hold sway?  And if it be the rafters should they tell the fishermen to bugger off which is what the fishermen seem to be saying at present to the rafters!

Truly a knotty issue. I don’t envy the local authority rule makers!

Help Save the World

Have you noticed that, of late, the literati and public celebrity know alls have starting using the expression “on the planet” rather than the much loved and traditional term “in the World”.

E.g..  The Blue Whale is the largest animal on the planet.

As a by-line this is probably logically incorrect as the only Blue Whale on the planet is a dead one, a deceased one and so not one at all.

Mass movements like this are usually driven by fashion and initiated by, yes you guessed it, political correctness.  But I am puzzled as to why “in the World” would be politically incorrect.

Our Earth is but one of the planets in the Solar System so to say “on the planet”  is not only imprecise but suggests that the matter relates to the Earth as a planet where it is at best primus inter pares in relation to the rest of the Solar System.  Using the term suggests we are but one amongst many and so not really all that important (maybe that’s the political incorrectness; thinking that we are important).

When I last looked I don’t recall that there was actually proper evidence that life exists anywhere else in the entire Universe.  Admittedly there is much speculation and wishing and hoping it might be true by many, and solemn declarations by people who should know better that life must exist elsewhere because there are billions of bits of elsewhere.  But no evidence.

Only Earth is “the World” so we should celebrate its, and our, uniqueness by getting rid of the vacuous phrase “on the planet” by summarily executing all television presents who mouth it without thought (pour encourager les autres).

And by doing so restore the Blue Whale to its rightful place as the biggest animal in the World.

So if you want to save the World tell everyone you know, including politicians and media types that up with this we shall not put.

Filming a shock Wave

The amazing thing about this is how it        makes       Hammond            talk                really               s   l   o   w   l   y.