On the British Aristocracy

These days you just can’t tell the difference between the aristocracy and the lower classes, in that they’re all unemployable, make virtually no tax contributions, have a taste for Burberry and shotguns, and don’t need to consider if they can afford another child.

Henning Wehn (b. 1974), German comedian and broadcaster, The Unbelievable Truth, BBC Radio 4, 2 May 2016

Clarke on Gogglebox

It has been calculated that, by 1985, every adult American will appear on a panel show at least once a month, and because of the enormously increased importance of ratings and surveys, a whole new professional class will spring up – the full-time TV viewer. This will be a great boost to the economy, as it will absorb thousands of citizens who, owing to their low IQs, would be otherwise unemployable.

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008), The View from Serendip, 1979

Where Next, Columbus?

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.

Ambrose Bierce (1842–c.1914)

On Civil Disobedience

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), former slave, abolitionist campaigner,

social reformer, orator, statesman

A Kind of Magic

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), Profiles of the Future, 1962

An Elementary Education

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.

Ambrose Bierce (1842–c.1914)

Thought For The Day

Given that Saint Valentine was a third century Roman priest who was stoned and beheaded, wouldn’t a more appropriate celebration of the evening be taking one’s steady gal to witness a brutal murder?

Dr Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory, Season 3, episode 15 (‘The Large Hadron Collision’)

New Definitions 1

IMPOSSIBLE Means: 1 I wouldn’t like it and when it happens I won’t approve; 2 I can’t be bothered; 3 God can’t be bothered. Meaning 3 may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.

John Brunner (1934–1995), UK novelist, Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Welshness in a Nutshell

In the first episode of Torchwood, Captain Jack Harkness decides to take PC Gwen Cooper into the Hub, the team’s secret base deep beneath the Cardiff Bay development. But he doesn’t take her back out via the front entrance – instead, they stand on a false paving slab. A mechanism raises them slowly until they appear at ground level, next to the water tower. Jack starts giving a very complicated explanation as to why they can’t be seen by passers-by, but then changes his mind.

The whole exchange (written by Swansea-born Russell T. Davies) captures one aspect of the Welsh national character perfectly.

JACK: Invisible lift has got more of a ring to it, don’t you think?

GWEN: But hold on. If no-one can see it when the lift’s coming up, there’s a bloody big hole in the floor. Don’t people fall in?

JACK: That is so Welsh.

GWEN: What is?

JACK: I show you something fantastic – you find fault.

For Major Tim Peake

I don’t know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.

John Glenn (b. 1921), 20 February 1962. Col Glenn was the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth, and is (to date) the oldest man to go into space, aged 77.