Visit the Pandas at Edinburgh Zoo

I was in Edinburgh this week, and decided to take the opportunity to go see the pandas. Though I nearly didn't get to as I only realised the day before that you have to pre-book a panda viewing on the Edinburgh Zoo website. Fortunately I managed to get my booking done in time.

Only Tian Tian (the female panda) was available for viewing as Yang Guang (the male) was having a rest from a busy half-term week of.....erm, being a panda? Before going in we got strict warnings to turn off the flashes on our cameras because that would stress Tian Tian, and also not to run around making noise as that would stress her too.

Christ, pandas sounds like wussy creatures. No wonder they're endangered.

As it turned out though, Tian Tian wasn't paralysed by stage fright, and in fact came out for a good old wander by the glass, so I was able to take some excellent photos.

Cute. Seriously cute. :)

My Tour of Duty as a Pretend Warship

This blog is usually for the purposes of logging various silly tasks that I set myself. Here's an off-topic post about a small (but equally silly saga) on Twitter.

A couple of weeks ago I set up a parody Twitter account, @hms_dauntless, intended to gently mock the current political and media storm over the sovereignty of the Falklands Islands. Within a short period it acquired 410 followers, including quite a few people from the Falklands, not to mention three members of the Military Wives Choir, randomly enough. Then it promptly got suspended by Twitter for "impersonation".

I'm a bit surprised that it got suspended. After all, the account profile clearly labelled it as fictional. Also, I suspect the actual Royal Navy ship HMS Dauntless doesn't actually release tweets like "Anyone else aroused by me? I've got a great big gun and honking great cannonballs" or refer to the Humboldt Squid as "mini-Cthulhus".

I've filled in a suspension appeal form to Twitter, in the hope that they'll let HMS Dauntless out of the brig. In the meantime, here's a few thoughts from me about what I've learned over the past couple of weeks.

The initial inspiration for launching @hms_dauntless was the Twitterstorm after the website of the Penguin News (the Falklands newspaper) turned out to have an image of Argentina's President Kirchner labelled "bitch".

Well, I sniggered. I've labelled files some funny things in my time. But various people in Argentina weren't amused and started sending the paper's editor, Lisa Watson, abusive tweets.

Lisa Watson seems to be made of fairly sturdy stuff. During the 1982 occupation by Argentina, and when she was a 12 year old child, she famously refused to get off a sofa when ordered to do so by Major Patricio Dowling, the notorious security chief on the islands. She certainly doesn't seem the type to be intimidated by a few obnoxious tweets. Indeed, she's replied to and engaged with people on Twitter to give her reasons why she wants to remain British, and doesn't want her home to be handed over to a foreign power. She's been pretty effective at putting across her point of view. I've noticed that some people started tweeting at her in an abusive way, and then went on to have a civilised conversation with her.

I decided to have a laugh and launch the good ship @hms_dauntless into this Twitterstorm. A gentle parody of the actual ship that's about to be deployed to the Falklands, @hms_dauntless was sent to patrol the Twittersphere, with its inaccurate missiles that wreak death and destruction to any passing sea life. As I was setting up the account, "Argentina loves One Direction" was trending on Twitter. Hence the profile described the ship as "Not as popular in Argentina as One Direction".

It was probably a good time to start a silly parody about the Falklands, since over the past two weeks the debate has got sillier and sillier. First Sean Penn - a genuinely talented but undeniably narcissistic star - decided to wade into the argument (he's since published a more nuanced, but also rather garbled, view on the subject). Then Ben Fogle waded in by threatening to feed Sean Penn to a crocodile. @hms_dauntless tweeted, "Renewed tensions between Sean Penn and Ben Fogle, Crocodiles report, "our voice is not being heard. We should determine our own dinner". Followed later by, "Breaking news. Will I Am refuses to take sides on crocodile dispute: encourages Sean Penn and Ben Fogle to negotiate".

On Twitter, things got sillier again with the sudden emergence of @freethefalkland, a hilarious, obviously-fake account, supposedly by a Falkland Islander. It proclaims to speak, "The true about the Falkland Island People and their search for the independence from the Britain." Actually, I shouldn't be so cynical about assuming he's a fake. After all, he insists, "I not Argentinian but if I was the Argentinian I would not be ashame. I am citizen of world friend. Take the chilling pill." Either way, he's been a wonderful comic foil for @hms_dauntless, albeit unwittingly. I hope he doesn't get banned.

Behind the silliness though, there is a real issue. The Falklands are a place I've never visited and most likely never will (though I'd love to - from their tourist website it looks like an amazing place), but the brief voyage of @hms_dauntless has put me in touch with tweeters on the Islands. As well as Lisa Watson I can recommend @joinfalklands, @siannybonny and @boundungagged. Behind all the rhetoric over territory and sovereignty, these are real people who clearly just want to get on with their way of life without being hounded by a foreign power. We should support that.

If Twitter is anything to go by, most of their support from back in Britain seems to be coming from the political right. This disappoints me, because I'm from the left and I think there are strong left-wing reasons to support the self-determination of a people from the unwanted encroachment of another nation. Sadly, too many of my compatriots on the left don't see that. Maybe it's because of Britain's history of being the unwanted encroacher on too many occasions. Or maybe they've swallowed the Argentine rhetoric about British "colonialism" (So? Argentina is also founded on colonialism. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is not a Native Patagonian name.) Either way, George Galloway's appearance on 10 O'Clock Live was toe-curlingly embarrassing - not that Galloway is any kind of good ambassador for the left in general anyway. (Don't mock, righties. You've got Robert Kilroy-Silk).

I hope that @hms_dauntless successfully appeals her court martial and sails the Twitter oceans once more. In the meantime, I plan to take the chilling pill.

I polished off a couple of tasks for this blog while in Edinburgh this week. The zoo had lots of penguins. It made me think of my Islander chums on Twitter.

Do Some Astronomy

When I added this task, I anticipated it would involve stumbling around a field in the middle of the night, staring through a telescope with some bearded men in duffel coats. Which sounds cold and unfashionable. As it turns out, I've since discovered, thanks to Alice Sheppard, the delights of Zooniverse, in which web users are asked to help sort through astronomical data from the comfort of their computer. No running around at night. No beards. No duffel coats. At the moment I've been playing around on the Galaxy Zoo pages, in which you're shown images of galaxies from the Hubble space telescope. You're then asked whether the galaxy is rounded or is a disk, if there's any spirals, if there's anything else in the photo, and so on. I'm finding it strangely addictive. For more data-crunching for the benefit of astronomy, there's Planet Hunters, looking for "transit features" that might suggest a planet around a star. Or you can help map craters with Moon Zoo. This is science, my friends! Science!

Write to my MP #spartacusreport

This blog has gone a bit quiet due to me having a lazy Christmas. Time for me to crack on with the to-do list.


I did think about using this task for something incredibly silly - maybe write something in green crayon demanding that everybody in Britain be given a free tricycle, or to suggest that Angry Birds is a CIA conspiracy. Then it occured to me that there is such a thing as Poe's Law.

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

This is just a guess on my part, but I can't help but feel that no matter what ridiculous letter I come up with, there'll be some constituent somewhere writing something even madder.

Besides, there is something I wanted to write to my MP about which is actually worthwhile. Those of you on Twitter might have noticed the hashtag #spartacusreport flying about. This is a report (actually entitled Responsible Reform) which has been put together by disabled people to show how the government has been misleading Parliament about the true scale of cuts to disability benefits. I know quite a few disabled people who are, quite frankly, terrified about what's likely to happen to them, and are worried about how they're going to survive.


To quote the authors of the report.

Our report shows that :
-The Government broke its own code of consultation over the DLA reform-The Government has entirely misrepresented the views submitted as part of the consultation, giving a partial and biased view.-The Government claim that DLA must be reformed as claims has risen 30% in 8 years - we find that these statistics are entirely misleading and give a "distorted view"-There is overwhelming opposition to the new benefit, Personal Independence Payments-Some elements of PIP appear to already be going ahead, despite a rejection of the plans and before legislation has passed.-The Government are repeatedly warned that proposals for PIP may break International and UK equality and Human Rights legislation

I've used Write to Them to send a letter to my MP (Jenny Willot, Lib Dem, Cardiff Central) 

Dear Jennifer Willott,
I would like you read the Responsible Reform report, also referred to
on the Internet as the Spartacus Report.
The report can be found online here:
https://skydrive.live.com/view.aspx/Responsible%20Reform%20for%20screen%20readers.doc?cid=cba86408918caa9e
This report into Disability Allowance Reform has been written,
researched and funded by disabled people. As one of your constituents,
I am very concerned by its findings and the misrepresentation of
disabled people that it exposes.
Please will you read the report and support sick and disabled people in
calling for a pause to Personal Independence Payments in light of this
new research.
I look forward to your response,

As well as writing to your MP, you can also support and publicise this report by using the #spartacusreport hashtag on Twitter, add the Spartacus Report twibbon to your Twitter profile, and sign this e-petition calling for a stop and review of the disability benefit cuts.

Rude Breadmaking

This one isn't a task as such, more of an addendum to the breadmaking task. I felt I should be a bit more creative than simply slinging stuff into a breadmaker. And so, I created this charming piece of cookery.

Half an hour at 200 degrees celsius later...

The shaft was good, though the balls were a little doughy. Even so, I was able to enjoy a cheese and ham salad testicle for my lunch today.

Fame at Last

The video for the flashmob I attended is now online.

My ugly mug waltzes onto the screen at 0.48

Find the Pterodactyls in Citizen Kane

Everyone knows that Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies of all time, but did you know that it contains pterodactyls?

Yes, pterodactyls.

Attending the Fortean Times Unconvention had put me in the mood for adding some fortean-themed tasks in the list. This month's FT contains an article on supposed monsters and UFOs in great movies, and there's a scene in Citizen Kane where supposedly pterodactyls were flying around in the background.

As with the Casablanca task, this also gave me an opportunity to see a classic movie that I've never got around to watching. After all, it's such a keystone in cinema that people talk about, say, The Wicker Man as "the Citizen Kane of horror movies" or The Room as "the Citizen Kane of bad movies". Might as well see the Citizen Kane of Citizen Kane.

Compared to Casablanca, I though that it was a more dated movie. Even so, the tale of Charles Foster Kane as a modern-day Ozymandias did grip and intrigue me, and it was particularly poignant finding out eventually what "Rosebud" meant. Nope, no spoilers for you lot.

Anyway, the pterodactyls. Here they are:

Okay, it's just badly-animated birdies whizzing around a soundstage mock-up of the Florida Everglades, but they do kind of look like pterodactyls.