h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Does anyone want Romney to run in 2016?"
(BBC link text)

Oh hell yes The Republicans wouldn't stand a chance if he did...

Or would they?

I couldn't help raising a wry smile to see Guy Martin filling the tank of his Rolls Royce Merlin engine, which came out of a Lancaster Bomber, he says, with fuel from a jerry can

I love listening In Our Time on Radio 4. Probably 95% of it goes over my head, but I enjoy hearing a bunch of heads discussing esoteric subjects and Melvyn Bragg trying to get them to do it in a way that the hoi polloi (Radio 4's hoi polloi being somewhat higher than average) can understand.

I'm with you there entirely. At a hootoo meet, Z and I discovered that we both had our phones full of the podcasts. The great thing is that he alternates between arts and sciences, and always seems to hit on something where you just have to think - "I always wanted to know more about that" - or, more often "I've never heard of that. I suppose I ought to know more about it"

The physical sciences are the ones that usually grab my attention the most, and which I can sometimes get a handle on, but even subjects such as philosophy, which I generally regard as a bunch of people with too much time on their hands over-thinking everything, are quite fun to listen to

Let me amend part of that.

A bunch of people with too much time on their hands over-thinking everything, why don't you all go and get a proper job

I agree with you there, too. The Philosophy is usually completely over my head. Chinese history is a doddle in comparison.

"Imagine returning to an age where there was no Google, no mobile phones, no washing machines, no electricity - it’s almost unimaginable in the modern day."
(Taken from the programme description for a new reality show called 10,000 BC)

Well, as far as the first two are concerned you don't have to go back very far at all, let's face it, and not many working class families had a washing machine when I was a kid, so that's not hard to imagine either. Electricity's always been around, at least after a certain point following the big bang - it's one of the fundamental forces of the universe, but distributed electrical power for domestic and business use, which I reckon is what they meant, is less than 150 years old.

Who writes this tosh?

And why washing machines? Not washing or having clean clothes would have been the last thing that bothered people in those days.

plus we all know you send furs out to the dry cleaners..never put them in a washing machine....

And you just know that Wilma Flintstone would have had some kind of animal-operated machine to wash Fred's dirty clothes

Oh, I've given myself an earworm

Yep. A pelican.

https://www.etsy.com/storque/media/bunker/2010/09/Wilma_wash.jpg

Ha, I knew it So that's another one of their claims bolloxed.

I see the handbags are out in force this week.

Right, I'm off to bed. With Stephen Fry. And Hermione Granger.

What a threesome

Speaking of Stephen Fry, I saw today that BBCAmerica will start running episodes of QI. Just when I'd given that channel up to Gordon Ramsey and reruns Top Gear and ST/TNG, they bring me back in... well, for one hour a week, at least.

qi isn't what it used to be.

I've hardly seen any of QI. The former Mrs Gosho is all over it like a rash, and she's blagged me into watching a few episodes on YooToob, but, and I think I've said this before, I'm no fan of Alan Davies (Davis?), nor of a lot of the unfunny comedians (an oxymoron?) that show up on the programme. Stephen Fry, though, is a treasure. I've just started watching the Fry and Laurie 'Jeeves and Wooster' series again

I'm even starting to get a little tired of Have I Got News For You. They do at least have some interesting guests and presenters, some better than others it has to be said. Any episode with Andy Hamilton or Ross Noble (who I know is also on QI sometimes) is well worth the money, as are Paul and Ian in very different ways. Paul's surreal and lightning-fast inventions are mind-boggling, especially when he makes something up and it turns out to be right, and Ian's naivete when it comes to popular culture is quite charming, although I'm sure he plays up to it a bit.

But the show has been getting too bitchy lately, and bitchy for the sake of being bitchy, as far as I can make out. That's not funny or entertaining. I always watch the extended Have I Got a Bit More... version, which is definitely the better of the two. I recently watched the one with William Shatner again. Pure gold As are the two with Brian Blessed

And then there's Kirsty Young

I'm hoping QI on BBCAmerica will start with series 1, "A" as the early series I was watching on youtube have disappeared. But I won't be surprised if they start with the current series.