Tor have marked the launch of their new web site by putting up some new short stories to read, including Down on the Farm, a story by Charlie Stross:

Ah, the joy of summer: here in the south-east of England it’s the season of mosquitoes, sunburn, and water shortages. I’m a city boy, so you can add stifling pollution to the list as a million outwardly mobile families start their Chelsea tractors and race to their holiday camps. And that’s before we consider the hellish environs of the Tube (far more literally hellish than anyone realizes, unless they’ve looked at a Transport for London journey planner and recognized the recondite geometry underlying the superimposed sigils of the underground map).

But I digress… [...]

[Via Whatever]

Found while searching for an mp3 of the TARDIS engine: is The TARDIS Sound Effects – A Not-So-Brief History the geekiest single web page on the internet today?

Ask anyone what happens when the TARDIS materialises and they will tell you it makes a sort of wheezing, groaning noise. Or they might say it sounds like the trumpeting of elephants. Some might even tell you it is the sound of a front door key being scraped down a piano wire. It all depends on how many Terrence Dicks books they have read, or how many DVD extras they've seen.

And whilst these answers are accepted fact now, the complete story is less simple and quite interesting. No honestly, it is quite interesting. Stay with me. [...]

Granted, it's not necessarily interesting to everyone. But that's not important.

The first trailer for Watchmen is out.

It certainly looks the part, and the cast is potentially pretty good; now let's see if they can extract a story that works in two hours of screen time as well as the graphic novel did in that format. It won't be the comic on-screen – it can't be – but it'd be nice to think that someone might finally do justice to Alan Moore's work.

[Via Oliver Willis]

Catching up on my backlog of Coverville podcasts I came across a track by Low Strung, also known as:

"Yale's only cello-rock group."

Their cover of U2's Where the Streets Have No Name doesn't appear to be available to stream at their MySpace page, but trust me: it's well worth listening to Coverville 459 for.

I liked Low Strung's U2 cover so much I went and bought their album. The ensemble's taste in covers isn't what you'd call adventurous, but the highlights – Baba O'Riley, Don't Stop Believing, Sympathy For the Devil and Fix You – are such fun¹ that I can forgive that minor sin.

[Via Coverville]

1. Both for the listener and, I suspect, the group. ↩

The Doctor loves the world.¹

[Via Fourth Edition]

1. Beware of some spoilers for season 4. ↩

Armando Iannucci imagines a meeting between David Cameron and Barack Obama:

Cameron: [The...] fundamental question we both have to address is: what should we actually do once we get into office?

Obama: Exactly. You know, I come from a background that is magnificent testimony to this great nation of mine. A child of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, we can all be proud of the path I've trodden to come through to this, the greatest moment in the history of civilisation when I eventually take the oath of office.

Cameron: Yes and similarly I too am from an exciting mongrel mix of cultures and values. Born of a mother from Kent and with a friend from Hull, I share and sniff the sense of wounded anger that blights this broken society I come from. So, as I say, what should we do about it?

Obama: Listen to the deep well of yearning within the hearts of the people. For example, what does your friend in Hull think you should do?

Cameron: Well, he was born in Hull, but he doesn't live there any more. I think he owns some of it, though. [...]

[Via The Sideshow]

To: The Editor, The Times:

Sir, Your article on degree classification (report, June 8) was by my computation the 20th successive article about higher or secondary education to be illustrated with pictures of attractive female students.

As the time for GCSE and A-level results approaches, with the no doubt inevitable record-breaking pass rates, I would welcome your assurance that the results will be illustrated by utterly spontaneous and unposed photographs of attractive girls opening envelopes, hugging effusively, jumping for joy, forming human pyramids etc, and that no exam success whatsoever is predicted for girls who are fat, spotty or plain, and certainly for no boys at all.

C. Osborne
Hadfield, Derbyshire

Just try to guess what featured prominently in the photograph the newspaper chose to accompany this letter.¹

[Via Qwghlm]

1. Copy preserved here, just in case they change the picture. ↩

Behold the Cat diamond.

[Via FFFFOUND!]

Reviewing a collection of memoirs by New Labour figures for the London Review of Books, John Lanchester spotted an interesting point of divergence involving former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott:

There is one fascinating counterfactual to emerge from Prezza. It concerns the incident when he punched an egg-throwing protester in Wales during the 2001 general election. He includes a photo of the punch, a solid left jab right on the man’s chin. There was a furore, which Prescott survived because the public (not the papers, not at first) were largely on his side. But Prescott was an amateur boxer in his youth, and on page 118-19 there is a photo of him landing what looks like a knockout punch on an opponent. He is right-handed, and the knockout punch was a right. Here is the counter-factual: if 16-stone Prescott had hit the egg-thrower with his right, he would have knocked him out, and quite likely have broken his jaw. If either of those things had happened – if the man had ended up in hospital – Prescott would have had to resign. Whoever Blair appointed as his new deputy prime minister would have had much less pull with the party, because no one had as much pull with the party as Prescott. So when the crucial vote on the Iraq war came, Blair wouldn’t have had a deputy able to bring the party onside in the way that Prescott did. Instead of 139 Labour MPs voting against the war, a majority of them would have voted against, Blair would (as he said in private) have had to resign, and we wouldn’t have gone to war. And all because, for once, a New Labour figure didn’t lean to the right.

No burglar alarm required.

I'd very much like to believe that Yvette's Bridal Formal is a spoof.

I mean, could anybody really have looked at this page and decided it would be a good idea to press the Publish button?

[Via arcanecrowbar, commenting at MetaFilter]

Peter Bradshaw was distinctly unimpressed with Mamma Mia!:

Mamma Mia! ties itself in knots trying to shoehorn in every single famous number, and each time, the beginning of an Abba song triggered in me a Pavlovian stab of pleasure, cancelled after a millionth of a second by a backwash of rage that this soulless panto has done nothing to earn or even understand the good feeling.

Some songs are easier to incorporate than others. Waterloo is saved for the closing credits, perhaps because screenwriter Catherine Johnson didn't grasp its metaphorical quality, and that she would not in fact need a vast Napoleonic army to troop across the island.

[Via Archie Valparaiso, commenting at Word Magazine]

I fell behind watching Doctor Who over the last few weeks, to the point where I had the last four episodes of the latest season to watch. Having assiduously avoided spoilers for three weeks, I sat down last night to see what I'd been missing.

I'm not going to write a review: I'll just point you to Stu's review of Journey's End and observe that fans who complain about the physics of certain scenes need to remind themselves that Doctor Who has never, ever, been Hard SF: that shot of the TARDIS <rot13>gbjvat gur Rnegu onpx vagb cynpr</rot13> worked, regardless of the plausibility of the physics and orbital mechanics.

Also, Bernard Cribbins is a National Treasure.

Prompted by a sighting of the box set of the first season of Friday Night Lights in HMV earlier today, I was wondering whether there was any word on when season 2 would be showing on ITV4.¹

I couldn't find a clear answer to the question, but with a little help from Google and Wikipedia I did find a startling post from back when the show's first season premiered on ITV4 that I think gives us a clue as to the show's chances of airing on ITV4:

The premiere of Friday Night Lights fell way below even the lowest of expectations. According to Media Guardian, the show was watched by just 26,000 people on ITV4 Wed night. I know more people than that. [...]

The premiere clashed with ITV1's live coverage of a Liverpool-Barcelona Champions' League tie, so there were extenuating circumstances, but still…

[Via Wikipedia]

1. Word has it that the writers screwed up horribly in season 2 by throwing in a ludicrously soapy plotline for two of the more appealing characters, but I refuse to believe that such a good show could have been completely derailed by one stupid idea. At any rate, I'd happily sit through season 2 and judge for myself if someone would just care to give me the opportunity. ↩

Judging by this review, I was fortunate to have given the BBC's new archeological drama Bonekickers a miss:

They clearly got very excited by the prospect of wringing real drama out of archaeology, but then they thought that maybe just digging in muddy fields wasn’t that exciting so they had to add some utter bollocks in to make it more gripping. Unfortunately, this means that every week they have to write scenes in which people become so enraged by archaeology that they go on killing sprees. In the world of Bonekickers, Tony Robinson would need 24-hour police protection.

In fairness, they're only one episode in; I suppose it's just possible that by the last episode the show will have built up a head of steam and all the doubters will be declaring it the best thing to happen to the profession since Indiana Jones picked up his bullwhip. I'm not going to hold my breath, mind…

What garden wouldn't be enhanced by the addition of The Zombie of Montclaire Moors?

[Via GromBlog]

Apple vs Microsoft.

And how would Linux fit into that picture?

I think the Linux equivalent would be a pile of knobs, switches, LEDs and a soldering iron, with a post-it note enscribed with the phrase "man 1 soldering_iron". ;-)

[Via Bifurcated Rivets]

Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke do nice work.

I especially like No. 60, No. 25 and No. 06.

[Via The Daily Dish]

There's speaking ill of the dead, and then there's just being mean:

[On the death of soap opera actor Clive Hornby...]

Since Emmerdale is not broadcast outside the UK to my knowledge, I know nothing about this actor. He clearly allowed himself to become and remain type cast and in the end left us without becoming known to millions of us. I find it not fitting as a question for a world audience. I have never ever seen Emmerdale and this loss should be a warning to other budding actors to not become type case if they really want to be known outside the UK. Joy

Joy Pattinson, ROLLE, Switzerland

Facebook: home of the invisible smackdown.