2011-06-16
2011-05-25
post/5838443666
video 19:36:34
James Burke in - and then out of - an A7L suit, as built by the International Latex Corporation for NASA’s Apollo programme.
2011-05-24
post/5812502488
photo 23:28:04
Dead Yet Alive - the top five historical figures mentioned on BBC TV. (From Ladies and Gentleman, this is the BBC at technogoggles, wherein subtitles are grist for data mining.)
2011-05-09
post/5340073277
quote 22:25:06
“ Electronic music fans also have Samuel Beckett to thank. In his book on the Radiophonic Workshop, Special Sound, Louis Niebur writes that the Waiting for Godot playwright recognized storytelling possibilities in radio that no other medium could offer. He wrote his first radio play, All That Fall, with the intent that sound design would play a major role. For the BBC’s 1957 production of the play, the use of audio to convey inner tumult and blend reality and fantasy drew raves from critics. It was enough to convince the BBC to create a separate department for this kind of experimentation. ”
William Weir : How the (Original) ‘Doctor Who’ Theme Changed Music in The Atlantic (via Instapaper).
2011-02-22
post/3439993445
quote 05:52:00
“ Mr Cameron said: “Britain has a range of strong defence relationships with countries in the region. “I seem to remember we spent a lot of effort and indeed life in defending and helping to defend Kuwait, so the idea that Britain should not have defence relationships with some of these countries I don’t understand. It is quite right that we do. We have some of the toughest rules on export licences and exports of arms anywhere in the world. Everything has to meet those rules.”The Foreign Office has revoked a series of export licences to Bahrain and Libya covering tear gas and gun components. ”
David Cameron in Kuwait to promote reform message, from BBC News. Sentences reordered for maximum irony.
2010-12-21
post/2407481449
quote 22:18:00
“ During one round of the game, Stephen Fry suggested that ‘countryside’ should mean ‘to kill Piers Morgan’. ”
From the section on the Uxbridge English Dictionary in Wikipedia’s List of games on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.
2010-10-26
post/1408923463
photo 21:44:54
Didcot Substation: a promotional image for BBC Four’s The Secret Life of the National Grid.
2010-09-05
post/1068603780
quote 09:08:36
“ At that Whitechapel Gallery evening, everyone there over 80 could vividly recall the Battle of Cable Street. Most said they had witnessed it at first-hand, and the scenes of out-of-control street-fighting had clearly burned themselves in on their memory. Some could describe as if it were yesterday the fear they felt, as the event descended into near-anarchy. All the same, I had a sneaking feeling that since they could not have been more than 10 or 12 at the time, perhaps one or two of them were recalling those chaotic events with help from Pathe newsreels or the memories of others. ”
Lisa Jardine Do our memories get better or worse with age?
2010-08-28
post/1024524357
quote 10:22:32
“ Over 90% of UK households already have digital television today, more than 70% already have broadband. In other words, they’re already living in a digital Britain yet their support for the licence fee is higher than it was in analogue households twenty-five years ago. The purists have spent a generation making the free-market case for abolishing the licence fee and the British public agrees with them less now than they did when they started. ”
More from BBC D-G Mark Thompson’s MacTaggart lecture (transcript at The Guardian)
