Tony Blews

I’ve said it before: “I do not own a television”. I have no need of one, I can watch DVDs on my computer. And, having recently bought and re-watched the 1985 BBC series Edge of Darkness,  I will probably never need to buy one again.

It seems to me that nothing as good will ever be made, and that our future TV viewing will consist of nothing but shite reality programmes and game shows.

So do yourself a favour and order it now. And do me a favour by earning me a few pennies by using this handy link:

I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek recently, mainly Voyager, and something has been niggling at my mind.

Space, as they say, is big. Really big. Frank Sidebottom also says that Space is ace, and we can’t really argue with that, can we? Space is also, by its very nature, three dimensional.

This seems to passed by the writers of Star Trek. Events always seem to occur within a set plane. For example, Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country begins with the an explosion on the Klingon Moon Praxis producing a shockwave which only seems to travel in two dimensions.

The Praxis Wave

This wave progesses through space until it is encountered by the USS Excelsior and Captain Sulu, who turn into the wave rather than dodging out of its way. Surely the former helmsman of the Enterprise should remember about Up and Down?

The Excelsior, not going up or down.

Ok, I’ll concede that the Praxis wave is a pretty effect, but that is no excuse for ignoring the third dimension.

Time and agin, when ships rendezvous or do battle, they do so sharing a common idea of up and down.

All the right way up!

Now maybe this should be the case during diplomatic meetings, but it does seem a mite strange for a battle situation.

Klingons on the, erm, Port Stern!

In fact, the only instances I can find where ships are not aligned like this is when one of the ships is either out of control or has been disabled.

Can anyone actually give me a valid reason why this always happens, or alternately find an example that contradicts this?

More ships, just for good measure.

According to figures published by the Strategic Rail Authority for the financial year 2002/3, 773969 people began their rail journeys from Crewe Railway Station, yet only 763846 people ended journeys there. This represents a net de-population of 10123 people in one year alone, by train alone. This is as close to 10000 people as makes no odds to me.

In the April 2001 census, Crewe had a recorded population of 67683 people. If we’re being generous we can round this up to a guestimate of 70000 people by April 2003.

Given these figures we see that within seven years of April 2003, in other words April 2010, Crewe will become a desolate no-mans-land inhabited only by temporary, transient people on their way to elsewhere.

I was there today. Its happened already.

Blurring faces on Google Streetview can go a bit far at times, as this shows.

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