There’s lots of hand-wringing going on about last week’s student protests and the policing that went with it. Well, I say hand-wringing, but most of the press seem to have cast the students as the bad guys and not care too much that plenty of kids of 16 and younger were incarcerated for hours in Westminster Square, intermittently being charged by horses and having their heads cracked by cops.

I’m not trying to get militant on you here. Like the Clone Wars, there was wrong on both sides. However there has to be a way for police to discrimintate between assholes throwing paint and scared kids queueing politely to be allowed to leave a kettled area. And I think I’ve worked it out.

They can use their EYES.

To this end I’ve developed a useful training tool for police who may find themselves in riot situtations and don’t just want to bust some student heads as payback for that fire extinguisher shit last month. It’s called Stick or No Stick.

Slide 1:

Slide 2:

Slide 3:

Slide 4:

Slide 5: The Crow (unkillable)

If I had any readers I’d say make your own and I’ll add them. I think I’m on to a winner.

As a kid I loved John Christopher’s Tripods trilogy. I was turned onto them by the TV series, and remember getting all three books from our local library and reading them in the week between the penultimate and final episodes of the first season. Whatever year this was it was when Prince William was born, as I remember them flashing a caption on screen during the first show saying something like ‘OMG! It’s a boy!’. That’s right, I’m old.

Anyway, it was always a hard sell to picture the masters in the second book, as Christopher’s description of them as a bit…well…all over the place. Triangle heads, three legs and arms, pyramid bodies, and that’s just from memory. Despite having aged pretty badly, the TV show did an admirable job by chucking out the author’s idea and doing their own version, which wasn’t half bad for 80s BBC sci-fi:

I’ve seen various editions of the books over the years and have read them probably more times than is healthy. Not all the covers were that great, and some fell into the strangely literal painting trap that plagued many of the ageing SF novels in Stafford library.

Nothing, however, prepared me for this:

City of WTF?

This is actually a scene in the book. Though in all my readings I missed the ‘mmm…nice man-boobs, puny human’ subtext. And while that thing on its rear is probably meant to be a third leg, just be grateful that the only thing it’s sticking into is the ground.

Merlin’s been renewed for a new series.

Hooray! I love Merlin.

Here’s my Merlin drinking game:

“We can’t tell Uther” – one shot

Morgana evil smile that nobody else sees – one shot

Arthur alludes to Merlin being useless – one shot

Gaius says “We can’t tell Uther” – two shots

Morgana sneaks off at night time – one shot

Somebody in Camelot is bewitched by an outside force – one shot

Gaius says “I’ve told you, we can’t tell Uther” – three shots

Someone gets knocked out at the end so misses Merlin doing magic – head shot