To boldly fail, where no meme has failed before

When attempted to use a meme for your cause it may be better if you check the appropriateness or not of that meme.

The Yes for Scottish Independence campaign have produced this meme.

Only problem is that in the Star Trek cannon Scotland is not an independent nation, indeed neither is the UK.  Referring to Denise and Michael Okuda's chronology of Star Trek, indeed from 2079 Earth is united under one government in Star Trek lore. This is the United Earth, it is not like the UN at all, but all people are joined together under one big parliament, this also includes Scotland. Indeed keeping the Enterprise's engines doing exactly what the c'ptain is wanting is a wee laddie from Lithgae.

 In 2161 the first four planets Earth along with Vulcan, Tellar and Andoria form the United Federation of Planets, maybe this is a bit like the European Coal and Steel Community,  a post conflict (in this case with the Romulans) community of peoples looking to live peacefully together.

So therefore to have a picture of a c. 2266-69 communications officer talking about Unionist propaganda when she lives happily on United Earth and in part of the United Federation of Planets seems a little bit bizarre. Surely it would be separatist propaganda that would cause more concern on the Bridge of the Enterprise?

Nice try guys  but you’ve probably just lost the geek, and almost certainly the Trekker, vote.

It's Friday...I just want to get my geek out

This Friday I'm just gonna geek out. So enjoy.

If you're a geek these'll need no introduction.

Babel Fish Googling to Your Ear Soon?

Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of Google.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says Google, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED"
"Oh dear," says Google, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes under the weight of its own virtual library.

That was easy said man. Before proceeding to prove that black is white and white is black and never being able to read a computer screen ever again.

Almost a quote from Douglas Adams Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy

Yeah I have substitute Google for God in the above quote, and fiddled around with the ending and with just cause. Not only is it because Google move with almost god-like majesty over the chaos that was the Internet before they came along, but they also assume to have brought order from that chaos. Quite the deistic approach really.

But the main reason is that Google is working on creating a babel fish, or a universal translator if you prefer. They are working on technology to develop a speech-to-speech automated translator for its Android Phones, it will be a hybrid of their its online universal translator service, Google Translate and their voice recognition system.

Of course once they invent something so mindbogglingly useful we may not need Google to Anglify every written word in the world for us. They may dissapear in the puff of logic not mentioned above, but in the original quote.

A Short Time Ago, In a Company Not Far from Here

Episode IV

A New Hand

The Federation will in centuries know, or should that be already know, darn it is so hard to decide when Linlithgow's most famous future son managed to help invent transparent 'aluminum' [sic]*. All of course in order to transfer a humpback whale from 1986 to the 23rd Century to save mankind.

Heck even in Bathgate we had a company that made more slimline and similar in manufacture communications devices to those used on the Enterprise NCC1701. Indeed the phones that came out of the Motorola factory in the 1990s and early 21st century were probably more reliable than some of the communicators that Kirk and his crew ended up using.

Little did we know that the Rebel Alliance would also benefit from the know how of West Lothians elite scientific minds. Yes indeed! None other than Jedi Master Luke Skywalker himself may well have benefited from the inventiveness of the people around here. To be precise Touch Bionics who have just released unto the market the first bionic fingers. The myoelectic bespoke prosthesis can pick up electrical signals from the nerve endings of severed fingers or hands to enable the user to handle a fork, glass or light saber.



Of course the pedants amongst you will no doubt want to point out that the Rebel Alliance took on the Empire a long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away. So maybe that just means that some descendant of Tatooine's most famous son is now living and working in Livingston.

* Why Montgomery Scott has the American way of pronouncing aluminium I dinnae ken.

Why I don't Blog About Torchwood?

The links from this blog entry come with spoiler alerts so if you are Sky+ing or recording all the episodes of Children of Earth the Torchwood five party look away now, there's nothing to see here.

As those who know me know I've always been a big sci-fi fan. Readers of this blog will see the occassional reference to the genre. But I don't Blog about Doctor Who or Torchwood because I easily get utdone by other Lib Dems and one of them is a fluffy elephant. So here are the best of the Lib Dem Torchwood blogs

Millennium Elephant (note subtitles are the pachyderm's own not those of Russell T Davis)

Day One - Women and Children First
Day Two - Honey I Shrunk the Kids
Day Three - Children of the Revolution
Day Four - CBBC

Also see Jenny Rigg complete with inbuilt spoiler alerts

Torchocalypse Day One
Torchocalypse Day Two
Day Four - Oh. My. God. (no spoilers)
Day Five

I'll update with later updates when they become available.

My Tuppence Worth: The Who Debate

Wow what a backlash there has been to the decision to make Matt Smith the next Doctor, as I blogged yesterday the Internet was abuzz before, during and especially after the reveal finally happened. Firstly having jokingly suggested that LibDemBlogs should have been renamed yesterday evening due to the Whovian throughput I'm shocked that so many Lib Dem friends* hadn't seen him in the excellent Party Animals but maybe that is shaded by the fact that some of the rest seem to be equally political drama and sci-fi geeks.


There appear to be three main bones of contention age, race and gender. Oh boy let's address all three.


First on the point of age why is this such an issue. Some have argued that this will cause the Doctor issues with authority figures (my Lib Dem Friends had better now whisper this too loudly near Jo Swinson, Julia Goldsworthy or Jenny Willott that) well if we could find a 900 year old actor they may not also have been totally satisfied either. The fact is in the previous 10 regenerations of the Doctor there have been juvenile and serious portrayals. In my opinion two of the must juvenile takes on it were carried out my Sylvester McCoy and Patrick Troughton, Peter Davidson though youthful in looks was quite a serious vision of the time lord. However, it can be a useful narrative devise look at the way Douglas Adams uses Ford Prefect's distance from his home world to instill a sense of unease in others. So I'm sure can Moffat et al over come the youthful appearance of the 900 year old persona, indeed there will be some quite comedic and possibly dramatic possibilities to come out of this casting.

I'd therefore argue that the age of the actor is an irrelevance if that actor can act. Yeah sure for the first time since I sat down to watch Jon Pertwee this will be the first time that the actor playing the Doctor is younger than me. So what? I'll be in my forties before he appears on the screen.

We move on to race. Like many when I heard rumours of Paterson Joseph or Kulvinder Ghir taking the role I was kind of excited about the possibility, especially of the former. Of course when Freema Agyeman became the first companion of an ethnic minority Doctor who was taking a well overdue step. The rules of sci-fi and indeed the regeneration of a Time Lord would not (as hinted before by the production team) inhibit a colourful outcome of a regeneration scene.

Sure it would have been good for racial equality reasons but rather than making the casting decision solely on those grounds it has to be made on acting ability. Which while these two fine gentleman are not lacking in as said last night there was a stand out performance that the team kept coming back to.

The final option and complaint related to gender. Sure in the worlds of Sci-fi there should be no inhibition of the Doctor changing gender. Although from history, if memory serves, male time lords have always regenerated as males and the females as females of those we have seen in more than one regeneration. Of course all that may well be able to throw itself out the window if we are down to the last time lord, something that was left a little ambiguous in the final scene of The Last of the Time Lords, all things may well be possible, including changing to the correct gender for reproduction purposes to maintain the race. So could some like say Jennifer Saunders or Billie Piper have taken over the role? Possibly, and it is something that cannot be ruled out for the future.

Seeing as both Billie Piper and Paterson Joseph have already appeared in other persona's in the series I'm surprised that nobody has pointed this out as a reason for not selection them as the next Doctor. Sure Freema came back as a companion and different character from her first appearance, but that was explained away in the storyline by genetics. Would it be right for the Doctor to regenerate assuming the appearance of someone from his past. He does after all appear to have no idea what appearance he will regenerate into. Look at the early look into the mirror, feeling or face or teeth of each new version of our favourite time lord. So maybe there is some part of the genetics that when this process goes ahead inhibits imitation of another being already encountered for although it will not result in the actuality of meeting oneself when traveling through the dimensions of time and space you may well re-encounter such a person and it may well cause fatal shock.

In the end the thing that has to be first and foremost in the production teams mind is can our chosen one act, can he portray the Doctor and will he hold the audience and give our writers and directors something to work with. As it emerged on Doctor Who Confidential last night Matt Smith was one of if not the first auditionee for the part, comment like 'in the first hour of the audition process'. Being first is possibly one of the hardest positions to fill as as more and more get seen you may easily be forgotten if great performances follow. Yet Matt had stuck in the production team's mind through all the others.

So true Doctor Who fans must ask themselves how can that me. Steven Moffat and the others are like Russell T. Davies before are well versed in the lore of the Doctor. These people seemed to have been so taken by Matt Smith's audition that they kept thinking back to it no matter who else they viewed. Surely that is enough for any of us to know that after he spends 6 months working out his particular take on the role that there will be something really special to look forward to once the face of David Tennent morphs into that of Matt Smith.

*Pity I can't link to all the others' Facebook up dates

The Water 'WHO'-ler Moment

Well I'm sure most people were merely content watching the announcement of Matt Smith's taking over the controls of and keys to the Tardis on Doctor Who Confidential but I know, cause I was one of them, that many of use were Tweeting, posting on forums, blogging, hitting websites and looking it up all at the same time.

The fact that my reveal of the name Tweet posted as soon as Matt Smith's face appeared on the screen is actually ahead of the BBC Breaking News Tweet was something I quite enjoyed. The fact that like a good Agatha Christie novel I'd already worked out the clues before hand and live blogged the final piece as looking certain before that even, even more. And now Twitter has gone down being over capacity. Yeah all us geeks are Tweeting to each other about the event and have brought down one site. Next.

Doctor Who where are you?

No must get away from the vision of Scrappy Doo as the second canine companion. I bite my thumb at you Wesley Crusher.

Watching it solely on TV you wouldn't have picked up the full excitement. This was a truly 21st Century water cooler moment. The thing is the watercooler was accessible through you own laptop. Every one from across the country and with Wil Wheaton a established Hollywooder we can say around the world was discussing it as it was being revealed without having to be sat on (not behind) the same sofa.

Matt Smith it is to be that is the answer. With all this hype on the net Steven Moffat and the rest of the team are going to have to deliver a superb 5th (or do these specials make it 6th) series of the revived series. However, having seen their work up to know I'm pretty sure we won't be let down.

Although Wil did raise and interesting question. Who will be the next companion(s)? I add in the plural as maybe it is time to return to having more than one companion again. I know the youngsters aren't used to it but having had Rose, Martha, Donna and Sarah Jane (plus the rest)all coming to the the Doctor's aid at the end of the last season, maybe we've weaned them in to the possibility.

Update: Whoops in all my excitemet I got Northern Irish news presenter Stephen Nolan mixed up with the sucessor of Mr RTD Steven Moffat

The Next Doctor: Live Blog to the Matt Smith Reveal

17:37 Has DT just hinted this is the youngest Doctor ever.

17:40 Stephen Nolan says youngest, been around TV, not that famous has had leading roles.

17:41 Twitterers suggesting Matt Smith from Party Animals and Ruby in the Smoke.

17:49 You sense this that run through the Doctor's should have led to the reveal.

17:50 26 year old

Sounding awfully like Matt Smith then.

17:58 the Reveal is that it is Matt Smith

The eleventh Doctor is Matt Smith. SN likes the hair.

An hour into the audition process they had already seen the eventual actor to take on the role.

Chosen as he was a good actor, definitely. Will be appear opposite Billie Piper again? Could be they may well find some way to make that happen.

As DT say Matt has got to define his take on the role. But I'm quite impressed from what I've seen him in. So all in all well done guys with the casting no wonder RTD is jealous.

18:06 Aw DT's letter to his sucessor. Sweet.

18:21 Excellent Tweet from Wil Wheaton (aka Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: TNG) "Hey, at least the new companion isn't Scrappy Doo" glad to know even the American's are talking about it, ok even if they are in the business.

Who will be Who

William, Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davidson, Colin Baker, Slyester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennent...

So who is it to be next. We'll find out soon.

Lucozade All Eck Wants for Christmas

Apparently the Rev I.M. Salmond First Minister to the new kirk of Holyrood wants a year's supply of Lucozade™ for Christmas. Well this does raise the questions is that in bottles or cans? How many bottles/cans does he get through in a day? What capacity bottle (if bottle is preferred option) does he use? Also does his dentist know he drinks this many sugary drinks on a daily/yearly basis? And if so, what has the First Minister's dentist got the say about it?

I follow commend Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott's wish on this wish list, though it will be somewhat delayed in delivery. He like me is hoping that Liverpool maintain their current position in the Premier League when the final, final whistles of the season are blown. For those not au fait with football that would mean Liverpool have finally won a title for the first time since 1989-90, the first under the Premier League brand and will help to keep the marauding Manchester United at bay from equalling our record of titles for at least another 2 seasons.

The Labour Leader Iain Gray wants Barack Obama's Ray-Bans™. These are probably so he can attend an East Lothian constituency party function without drawing attention to himself.

Meanwhile elsewhere Margo MacDonald clearly wants to be Willie Wonka by wanting a whole chocolate factory, maybe Margo is going to attempt euthanasia by death by chocolate. Margaret Mitchell is a bit Michael Jackson-esque is wishing for a chimpanzee and Willie Coffee wants a Star Trek™ phaser gun (this is available just up the hill from the Parliament and down South Bridge at Forbidden Planet™), unless of course he wants a fully functioning model in which case he may have to wait until after Montgomery Scott is born in Linlithgow.

World Still Exists! Is this Due to One Way Traffic?

OK the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been fired up, but before everyone breathes too big a sigh of relieve protons are currently only going in one direction. you see they having starting the ones going in the other direction yet, nor the deflection of the two once they hit full speed.

Not that I'm necessarily a doom sayer but rumours of the Earth's survival have yet to be cleared up, counted clarified and appraised after the scientists make crash test dummies of us all.

So just in case you haven't received* the directions from Prak on how to get to God's final message to his creation written in large letters of fire I'll let you into a little secret.

Meanwhile in tribute to the words of Michael Caine we ask the scientists to only blow the doors off and keep to that remit.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this I got to thinking. If LHC is trying to replicate the bib bang surely the least likely outcome would be that we'd get sucked into a quantum singularity or a black hole. Surely at the point of big bang there be explosion not implosion and we end up getting scattered to the ends of the galaxy waiting for the micro gravity of our component parts to cohere together to form glubs of mass somewhere out in the void. So it looks like it may not be a Vogon Construcutor Fleet we have to worry about after all. People of earth your attention please.

* That includes Scottish Tory Boy for one, more than likely, based on this. Though not Holyrood Patter.

The Three Torchwood Tease

OK BBC Three moved their first look of Torchwood from Wednesday to Friday for last night's penultimate episod of series two Fragments. Goody I thought we get two this week and then finish off next week.

Then and this is not giving too much away for those who have yet to see it on BBC2, as its in the teaser at the end of the previous episode aired on 2 last night, loaded all the cast into a warehouse and blow them up. Of course we now that one character will have survuved all this as we know his death is a long time hence having seen it in New New York in Doctor Who. But what about Ianto, Toshiko, Owen (fragile at the best of times now he's a zombie) and Gwen. Well what we got last night was a missing piece of the back stories of all the other main characters. We get to see how Jack, Ianto, Tosh and Owen all come to end up with Torchwood in the first place.

It was an excellent very pacey yet well paced episode and the return of a snide Captain John at the end with a vendictive comment and threat to Jack. Only for us all then to find out that was the last episode of this series to be shown on BBC Three so we all have to wait until BBC Two catches up in a fortnight's time. ARGH!!!

My BBC they say, why do they treat me to two new episodes in the space of a couple of days then leave me hanging for a full two weeks. Very naughty of them I guess we'll all be chumping at the bit for a fortnight now.

The Second Greatest Science Writer Has Gone

At the age of 8 I once wrote an essay in class called "Journey to the Moon". The reason I remember this particular childhood essay is that it took up 11 pages of my exercise book, normally they took a max of three and the comments at the end in red ink. 'Are we ever going to get to the moon or are you the next Arthur C Clarke?'

The reason for this comment was that despite 11 pages of an 8 year olds early attempt at science fiction he had not managed to get out of earth's gravity on this trip to the moon. The teacher had spotted at an early age my love for the genre, and sub consciously had attracted me to my father's bookshelves. These were full of Clarke and Isaac Asimov and my love for Sci-fi continued to blossom so much so that the unfinished novel on my hard drive is a sci-fi book of considerably more than 11 pages, but at least the ending has already been writing I'm just working on getting there through the twists and turns I've set in motion.

The great man, who himself said he had entered his 90th orbit around the Sun, passed away appropriately enough at the Apollo Hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Since Apollo 11, 12, 14 through 17 all achieved what that 8 year olds essay never did and reached the moon. It seems appropriate that a full circle seems to have been encompassed in the death of the "greatest science fiction writer in the world" in accordance with the Clarke-Asimov Treaty.

So the last of the big three, along with Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, and a truly inspirational and has finally thrown off this mortal coil. He will be free of the post-polio symptoms he'd suffered from since the 1960s but will this world ever see the likes of such great writers and visioniaries in my favourite genre again.

We can but try.

Is this the Ultimate Answer? If So Panic!!!

For many years as a Douglas Adams fan I have long known that the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life the universe and everything should be 42. However, I’m quite sure that as a sci-fan fan who was also brought up with Star Trek that the question was not 'How long should the British police be able to detain a suspect without charge?'.

For this sadly is the new number that has been arbitrarily picked by someone at the home office, following the failure of 90 and 56 to be the figure that people might love to up the ante from the original 14 days a few years ago, which itself had been an increase from 7 which itself was 3 more than the police had at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Newsnight last night did a pastiche of the Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy to explain the whole story leading to 42 days. However, it looks like the graphics have got worse over almost 30 years, so much for CGI at the Beeb, or at least in the news department.

42 to me has always been a nice friendly number just like the words ‘Don’t Panic’ were on the guide. To have it associated, and I hope only briefly, with another attempt by Labour to extend the time frame in which humans can be held without charge is another backward step.

Now I don’t always agree with the former Tory Chancellor Ken Clarke but last night on Question Time I did, he said that the Government had yet to prove a need to extend, let alone double, the period that was so recently reached only as a compromise. All they point out is that one or two cases have reached the end of he period but to me this is not a valid reason to extend. This is merely an example of Parkinson’s law, where work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. It doesn’t mean that any more time is needed for the task, it may even mean that the task could be completed sooner to the same standards if less time was available and more concentration exercised on it earlier.

Personally if 42 does somehow become the Government’s answer to this question I’d remove the word don’t and say PANIC!!! Because while the US has to charge within 48 hours not 42 days, they do have an interment camp at Guantanamo Bay so the Isle of Man may be partially returned to its WWII status if we not careful and Brown tries to imitate Bush too much.

Not quite the Ultimate Answer

Blogger wasn't behaving for me on Friday so I apologise for the delay in announcing that this blog made Iain Dale's top 100 Lib Dem Blogs found on this pdf file.

As a Douglas Adam's fan I was somewhat upset not to take the coverted 42nd spot that honour going to Chris Black. Instead I find myself one spot above at 41.

I just hope that I was not deducted points by constantly referring to Iain's blog as Mrs Dale's Diary in my writting. After all who said everything is fair in life and political blogging. This is also not to be taken as a plead to drop one spot in any subsequent list that Iain many produce, in fact I hope to improve on his criteria in future.

I marked each blog out of ten on the following 10 areas: design; frequency of posting; writing ability; personality; comment; humour; range; interaction; popularity; independence of thought. This generated a mark out of 100. - Iain Dale

You can see his list of the top 100 political blogs as well as the top 100 of each of the main parties here on his downloadable guide to political blogging.

So Long and Thanks For all the Fish

Conservative Home have launched a vote to select a new logo for the Tory party.

Now being a big 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' fan I think that the first one featuring the Dolphins reminds me of when the second most intelligent creatures took their leave of Earth. However, their last message was mistaken as a double somersault through a hoop while whistling the star spangled banner.

I do hope that is a good omen that the Tory message will me so unclear to the voters that they have no idea what is is that they are saying. Then people will look for parties with substance rather that just one that is performing stunts to impress.