Unlikely

A couple of days ago octopoid_horror sent me a link to a trailer for a Star Trek "Porn Parody"* - to which my main response was "special effects have now come so far that the special effects of the porn movie look better than that of the original TV series:

Today, zornhau linked me to this article which says that the plot is also better, and ties into canon better than any of the later Trek movies.

It really is an odd world we live in.

(I'm not saying anything here about the quality of the acting. For fairly obvious reasons.)

*The basis of the porn parody series seems to be that parody is protected under US law, so you can basically make your own porn of anything you like without getting getting (or paying for) licensing, providing you say that it's a parody of the original. There are now a lot of them.

I despair, I really do

From a poll carried out for today's Sunday Times:

40% of people did not feel Britain had benefitted from immigration in any way. 88% agreed that immigrants unable to speak English or unwilling to integrate were creating discomfort in British communities, 93% thought people coming to live here permanently should be required to learn English.

From UK Polling Report.

It's the 40% I particularly despair of, but all of the figures tell me that the previous government did a god-awful job of selling immigration, and has been effectively encouraging the BNP.

Interesting Links for 17-4-2011

• Lunch With Google's Chief Economist
  (tags: google economics statistics)
• Batman vs. Harry Potter: Battle of the Orphans
  (tags: harrypotter Batman)
• How Richard Feynman Thought
  (tags: RichardFeynman thought)
• What if Star Wars had been based on a different Kurosawa movie?
  (tags: starwars kurosawa)
• When you hear that I have died, think of this.
  (tags: inspiration death poetry)
• Awesome demonstration of how landscape is fractal
  (tags: fractal video)
• Charlie Sheen organizes bipolar awareness walk.
  (tags: mental_health CharlieSheen)
• Let's See What's Out There - a fantastic set of articles on Star Trek: TNG
  (tags: startrek)
• The mathematical incompetence of Adam Roberts
  (tags: AdamRoberts scifi mathematics)

Sport is like war, except less fun

Following on from the discussion yesterday of sectarianism in Scottish football, here's a short advert against racism in football...

via budgie_uk

You can feel envious of me now

In February Julie and I went to Tenerife, and one of the things we did was a trip up El Teide, the dormant volcano that makes up the centre of the island.

Six weeks later, someone went up there with a time-lapse camera and got some of the most beautiful video footage I've seen.

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

It is _absolutely_ worth watching this full screen, on the largest monitor you have.

(via johnbobshaun on email, and lproven on Facebook)