The ancient Celtic rite of the Summoning of the cab

Flying the flag







Clan McCamera highlander from Glen Fuji by Ben Canon

wee old couple

Walking with dad down by Holyrood near the Parliament I saw this elderly couple standing by one of the walls of the Palace of Holyrood and was trying to get a pic of them from my side of the road, but every time I tried a stream of cars would go past, or other people would walk through my frame. Finally, just as they started slowly walking again I got a shot; I just liked the image, their age, their character and how sweet it was that as they walked along so slowly, both stooped with age they were still holding hands.

Home, home on the range...

Among all the acres of tartan on display down by Holyrood today for The Gathering (even by Edinburgh standards there were a lot of kilts and plaid) a single, old cowpoke, taking the weight off his feet for a few moments, sitting outside the Parliament building and looking over to the Palace of Holyrood and the Queen's Gallery. The contrast between his cowboy hat and shirt and the Saltire and Union flags and the old buildings across from him appealed to me and I had to get a shot:

Alice in Wonderland trailer

There's a very brief - but good quality - trailer for Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland now on YouTube. Sadly you'll have to follow the link as embedding has been disabled for it, which always annoys the hell out of me - if you are going to share a video publicly via YouTube then you obviously want people to see it; you do that best in the virtual world of the web by encouraging others to share it, the digital version of word of mouth and being able to embed makes sense for multimeda like trailers, blocking the function while still having it up publicly shows a PR firm who haven't quite grasped the digital world and how to use it to share and include their client's works with their audience. Still, the video looks amazing, as you might expect, Burton and Lewis Carroll being rather obvious bedfellows to my mind, although it may be slightly over-egged in the pudding department.

Giant steps are what you take, walking on the Moon...

How can it really be forty years to the day since the first human beings walked on the surface of a celestial body that was not our own little world? How can it be that we've never surpassed that magnificent achievement after four decades? Oh don't get me wrong, there have been other incredible, world changing endeavours - the Human Genome project springs to mind - but after four decades not to have striven beyond that Moon walk is dreadfully sad. Its like Concorde being retired without a next generation bigger, better, faster, more efficient replacement coming in, or the Shuttle due to finish its flights next year. Sometimes it feels like we've gone backwards a bit, not a good thing as a species.



Yes, I know there are other important priorities needing world resources, not least feeding the hungry and controlling runaway populations. And some will say we shouldn't 'squander' money on space when we have these problems to look at here. But as Bill Hicks used to say, if we didn't spend so much on every more devious ways to kill one another we could spend the money we spend on weapons to feed the hungry and still have plenty left over to explore space. Hell, if we took what women collectively spend on make-up every year we could do that! But still I feel sad that those things which marked the wave of a bright future when I was a wee boy now turn out to have been the highwater mark and the tide of progress has receded. Although I did really enjoy the image of all three of the Apollo 11 crew with Obama on the news. Three of my boyhood heroes. Still three of my heroes.







my signed copy of Two Sides of the Moon by David Scott and Alexei Leonov, a memento of the day when an Apollo astronaut came into my bookstore and I got to shake his hand.

Preparing for the Tattoo

Some of the grandstand seating and control tower erected on the Castle Esplanade for the annual Royal Military Tattoo which takes place during the Festival in August and these days also gets used for some concerts before and after the Tattoo. Duran Duran and Florence and the Machine were on there on Thursday night - amazing spot for a gig, the Castle gates and battlements to one side, Edinburgh at night to the other sides below your view from the top of the vast volcanic Castle Rock. Alas, also very exposed to the elements and that evening we had thunder, lightning and torrential rain, which is the drawback to that sort of venue... I have been just once to the Tattoo, not really my cup of tea, although it is quite dramatic to see a massed pipe band at night come marching out the Castle gates, which are flanked by statues of the Bruce and Wallace, fire blazing in metal braziers on the battlements above. And at the end all the lights out, even the ones which floodlight the Castle, save for one spotlight and the haunting image and sound of a single, lone piper on the wall of this ancient fortress high above the city.

Religious fundamentalists

"Anyone who works on a Sunday is making a mockery of God and His laws, but God says He will not be mocked. He has power to sink a Sunday ferry." No, this isn't some Islamic fundamentalist but some religious idiot on the isle of Lewis. His ire raised by new Sunday sailings which has outraged the bigoted, blinkered, backward, intolerant Wee Free ultra devout Christians there. These guys take Sunday so seriously the men often won't shave before church because that is work. And like most seriously hardcore religious freaks of any persuasion they think this gives them the right to dictate how others should also live. Now I make no bones about it, in my opinion these people are fucking idiots and bigots to boot - this is the same splinter from the Church of Scotland who are so against Catholics, for instance, that when a member who was also a government minister attended the funeral of a friend and colleague who just happened to be Catholic he was ejected from the church and not allowed to return. That's the sort of folks we're talking about - and of course all draped in a holier than thou attitude.

Now much as I ridicule these throwbacks - and I think they richly deserve ridicule - I do still hold that they are free to follow their religious beliefs as are all people. But not to inflict their own rules on everyone else. You object to work on Sundays? Fine - no-one is asking you to use the bloody ferry service. But others in the region do want to use it, that's why they have been campaigning for years to have it. Civilised people are meant to live and let live, so logic dictates those who don't want to use it because of their convictions should not use it and those who are not hampered by ancient superstitions interpreted by incredibly dour old joyless bastards should be free to use it and not be told by those self same, self important twonks what they can and cannot do.

And as for that quote at the start - well the first ferry had mechanical problems so of course these superstitious old fools claim Divine providence. Yeah, I'm sure god has nothing better to do with her time than make a ferry engine in Scotland break down. If that's god's will does that mean it was god's will that French aircraft should crash a few weeks ago? If so then that's a pretty screwed up person. And note the language - not enough it broke down, he seems to be eager for his little god to rise up in wrath against the infidels and drown them. Now if a Muslim wrote that he'd end up in Belmarsh under the anti-terror laws. An ultra Christian on Lewis gets to have that published in the paper. Those are the sorts of people I'm ridiculing and they damned well deserve it for spouting intolerance, bigotry and even threats of divine violence against anyone (which is most people) who don't subscribe to their narrow minded views. And they will cloak themselves in that tired, tattered old cloak of Respectablity and Religious Belief as if they are somehow noble. We need to get Wicker Man on some of these joyless buggers.

Doctor Poo

Viz offers up a scatalogical take on our favourite Time Lord with Doctor Poo, traversing time and space desperately trying to find a quiet loo to take a dump, thwarted at every turn by Cybermen, Sea Devils and Daleks. I especially like the 'handicapped' symbol on Davros' personal loo. Vulgar and crude (it begins with a farting version of the classic Baker-era Doctor Who theme) but funny (via SF Crowsnest):

1969

Hard to believe that on this day forty years ago human beings, for the first time in all of recorded history, were on their way to the moon. July 16th, 1969, and the enormous Saturn V lifts from its pad, its gigantic bulk suddenly no longer earthbound, and it reaches into the sky... and then beyond the sky. Humans have made many great explorations of new lands, uncharted oceans, jungles, deserts, mountains, but this, this was something completely new. Less than a decade after Gagarin had become the first man in space (an event itself which came only a couple of decades after jets made their first appearance, those in turn coming only four decades after Orville and Wilbur's historic first flight at Kittyhawk) humans were travelling to the Moon.



Its hung over every human culture there has ever been, since the days of hunter-gatherers, its been observed by the early priest-astronomers of the first civilisations in what we now call the Middle East, worshipped as a goddess by many cultures, observed by the first modern scientists like Galileo and Copernicus, its affected our weather and our tides for billions of years. But the idea of men on the Moon was a dream, a work of fantasy. Until July 1969. When it became something truly remarkable. An event that for one brief spell drew together all the peoples of our divided world into one species, dreaming the same dream, hoping the same hopes, willing Collins, Aldrin and Armstrong to succeed in the daring, dangerous endeavour. A magnificent moment.







NASA's restored video of Neil Armstrong's 'giant leap' (link via Boing Boing)

Je suis jalouse

And since its Bastille Day, another French-themed post, methinks, this is a pop video from Emily Loizeau who I've been getting into recently, most of her tracks are in French, with a handful in English, most enjoyable.

Vive la Revolution! Off with their heads!

Happy Bastille Day - vive la revolution! This is the fancy cover on a bottle of wine in my local French deli/restaurant, the fine La Marche Francais in Edinburgh's Haymarket, that caught my eye one day while in getting some nice wine and cheese and they were nice enough to let me take my ever-present camera out and fire off a couple of snaps, so I thought it seemed appropriate to post today for the Fête Nationale.

Achtung! Destroyer!

Many of the islands - or inches as they are known - in the Firth of Forth sport structures to fortify them from throughout our long history, most notably additions for the two World Wars to protect the vast, strategic river opening into the North Sea and the important Rosyth Naval Dockyard a little further upriver. You can see structures from 12th century abbeys to 1940s blockhouses on the various islands. Legend has it that this particular one just off Cramond had its buildings specifically arranged to create the illusion of the silhouette of a Royal Navy destroyer. On a murky, overcast, misty day like this one it has to be said it does look remarkably like a destroyer in profile and its hard to believe that's coincidence. I'd imagine a U-Boat captain peering through a periscope, probably at night or under cover of fog, seeing this would probably reversing engines schell! Which was probably the idea.

Bare faced lies with a you betcha smile

The Daily Dish has an interesting compilation of the many bare-faced lies told by Sarah Palin during her political career. It never ceases to amaze me how brazenly some politicians will simply lie even over pretty easily checkable claims, from relatively small ones about meetings right up to fabricated justifications for wars. And I'm always depressed how many supporters continue to believe in these duplicitous toads even when they have been caught out time after time lying to the public, a sad indicator of the fact that many voters are indeed just as stupid as these lying politicians obviously think they are. (via Boing Boing)

"Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska has spent "millions of dollars" on litigation related to her ethics complaints; in fact, that figure is much, much lower, and she had initiated the most expensive inquiry.



Palin lied when she denied that the Alaska Independence Party supports secession and denied that her husband had been a member; in fact, even the McCain campaign noted that the party's very existence is based on secession and that Todd was a member for seven years."

Pavement cafe

In recent years pavement cafes and bars have become much more common even in Scotland, partly being a bit more Continental but also, I suspect, fuelled by the smoking ban inside bars and restaurants (and what a difference that made, nice to be able to enjoy a pint without leaving smelling like an old ashtray from second hand smoke). For the most part its rather nice sitting outside to enjoy a beer or coffee though so its a change I like, except when some establishments put out chairs and tables in very innapropriate places (like fairly narrow pavements, there are some places they just shouldn't be) or when you get ignorant folks who keep dragging the chairs out further until they're blocking too much pavement and forget folks actually need to talk past them. But on the whole its quite nice we've got a lot more of this now. This was a quickly fired off snap in Edinburgh's New Town; I especially like the young guy sitting on the steps nearby looking over at the tables.

Caricature

Street caricaturist at work on the Royal Mile, spotted while walking home one evening; for some reason there's something I find interesting about taking a picture of someone who is in turn creating a picture:

Snow White - the sequel

Via Cartoon Brew comes a link to this Snow White - the Sequel animation by Picha, with narration by none other than the wonderful Stephen Fry (the whole thing is on YouTube in eight parts). Apparently made in 2007 according to CB but not widely released (first time I've come across it, I must say), its NSFW and a little naughtier perhaps than the original Snow White, although to be honest I always wondered in that one just what this young girl was doing alone in a home with seven all male dwarves...

Red Rabbit

Rather nice wordless animation (via Boing Boing):

Red Rabbit from Egmont Mayer on Vimeo.