For our #MondayMotivaton today I try to work out which sports we can still play whilst socially distancing...
...explained through the medium of Hot Hits compilation albums!
Association Football? NO! Keeping two meters apart is too difficult in soccer, unless we use the rules of table football for each match (note: no spinning and no tilting the pitch!)
Angling? YES! Social distancing is the reason most people take up this pastime in the first place, plus the smell of bait keeps most people at least two meters away from you.
Motor racing? POSSIBLY! Yes you're far away from people on the track, but pit crews would probably have to be banned. You'll need to change your own tyres if you want to bring back F1 nowadays.
Archery? YES! In fact there's no better way to keep people socially distanc than waving a recursive bow around and yelling "don't you f*cking dare!" like a distressed drunk at the Battle of Agincourt.
Skeleton Bob? NO! You're going to leave a trail of exhaled germs behind you on the track that all subsequent competitors would inhale. Technically one person only could compete safely, but is that really sport?
Triple Jump? YES! Possibly the safest of all track and field events, but competitors would need masks in case they sneezed in the sandpit. Rakes would of course need to be two meters long.
Rugby? NO! Not even League. Scrums, tackles and communal singing in a shared bath afterwards makes this a COVID-19 no-no. Don't try Rugby Sevens either, as I'm not convinced that's actually a sport rather than a warm-up.
Tennis? POSSIBLY! Keeping two meters apart would mean lots of emphasis on 100mph aces from the baseline and that really kills the drama of the game. Players would have to sanitize their own balls and stop picking at their pants before serving too.
Well there you have it: sport is possible during the coronavirus outbreak but you have to think it through beforehand. Fortunately sports enthusiasts are our top thinkers, so I'm sure common sense will prevail! #StayAlert
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What with you being so busy and everythign you may not have visited your local library in a while.
So come with me on a virtual library tour, courtesy of stock photography, to see what we do for a living...
The enquiries desk is normally your first stop in a library, and this is where you will meet The Angry Librarian!
Why is she angry? Because people keep asking her stupid questions!
"Are you open?"
"Do you have a toilet?"
"That chair's wobbly!"
"Why isn't it available in audiobook?"
"Someone else is on the computer and that's not fair!"
Today in pulp I look at the original white stripes: the world of dazzle camoflague!
Traditional pattern camoflague had been used by the British Royal Navy to break up a ship's outline for some time. But in 1917 artist Norman Wilkinson presented the Admiralty with a different idea - camoflague that confused enemy rangefinders.
Dazzle - known in the US as Razzle Dazzle - would use high contrast colours in irregular patterns to make it difficult for enemy gunners to calculate a ship's range and bearing. This would (hopefully) lead to them taking up a poor firing position when they attacked.
Friendship is universal. So are human-eating alien lizards in sunglasses. At least that's what we thought in 1983, thanks to one blockbuster TV mini-series.
This is the story of V...
Writer Kenneth Johnson had a strong background in TV drama and sci-fi, having worked on The Incredible Hulk and The Six Million Dollar Man. In 1976 he created The Bionic Woman series.
But his next project would be more political...
Johnson was interested in Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here, a story about how fascism might take hold in America. He worked up a modern retelling of the story - called Storm Warning - and pitched the idea to NBC as a mini-series.
Abraham Van Helsing may be the most famous of the early occult detectives, but there were many others who appeared in Victorian and Edwardian literature.
Today I look back at some of the early supernatural sleuths who helped to define a genre that is still going strong today…
Occult detectives explore paranormal mysteries, sometimes by using spiritual skills. They could be normal detectives investigating the occult, occultists who use the dark arts to solve crime, or detectives with supernatural abilities such as clairvoyance.
Occult detectives began in the mid-19th century: Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) had set the template for detective fiction, whilst spiritualism and paranormal research also began to interest the public. Séances and Ouija boards were familiar tropes for Victorian readers.
In the shadowy corners of the shortwave spectrum lurk the Numbers Stations: strange radio broadcasts of mysterious blocks of numbers in creepy monotone voices!
It's actually an old form of spycraft which is still in use today. Let's take a listen...
A Numbers Station is a type of one-way voice link for sending information to spies in foreign countries. Operating on Short Wave radio bands they transmit a secret code of spoken numbers.
Use of Numbers Stations peaked during the Cold War, but some are still operating today.
Numbers Stations are operated by various national intelligence agencies. At set times on a pre-arranged frequency a musical tone is played, followed by a speech synthesised voice reading out blocks of numbers. To most listeners it sounds both creepy and meaningless.
Today in pulp I revisit a mystery of the recent past: did ‘John Titor’ really travel back in time from 2038 to the year 2000 to warn us about an apocalyptic future? And why was he so keen on getting his hands on a 1975 IBM 5100 computer?
Let’s find out...
In 1998, US radio talk-show host Art Bell read out a fax from a man claiming to be from the future. Two years later the same man, calling himself Time_Traveler_0, left similar messages on the Time Travel Instutute’s internet forum.
They told a strange tale…
“Greetings. I am a time traveler from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975.”
For the next two years Time_Traveler_0, now calling himself John Titor, would leave many similar messages on internet forums.