Couple of quizzes to keep you entertained. There are no real rules; I will post the answers after a suitable period of time. Discussion is permitted.
Cwiz 1: Prisons
1. In which novel did Edmond Nantes escape from the Chateau d’If?
2. In which prison was the Marquis de Sade incarcerated?
3. Which South African prison was named after the Afrikaans word for seal?
4. Which Cavalier poet wrote, “Stone walls do not a prison make”?
5. Which US prison took its name from pelicans?
6. Who wrote
I never saw a man who looked,
With such a wistful eye,
Upon that little tent of blue,
Which prisoners call the sky.
7. Tartarus was a dungeon in Greek myth; for whom was it built?
8. Frank Darabont directed which prison movie?
9. Which isolated UK prison opened in 1809 to house Napoleonic War prisoners?
10. In 1952, the Kray twins were held in which historic prison?
This cwiz is courtesy of ProfessorPineapple
Cwiz 2: Scrambled Plays
1. Forgoing toadwit
2. Meth cab
3. Née in lewd farmyards
4. Limp agony
5. Anal seas fathomed
6. Sex up or die
7. A Leo knocking bar
8. See earthling games
9. I scorn hero
10. Sole had soul
Ovally Balls 
‘elf a safety gone mad. Taking away our rights to cause death and carnage on the roads.
LikeLike
My ex. and current wife were better drivers than me, although I have caught them up I think through the experience of switching back and forth between the UK to Germany, and being the one who does the holiday driving.
My uncle drove everywhere until his late 80s. Following on from the DCI’s point, I’m sure not being able to drive anymore was one of the reasons why he declared there was no point in ‘living a life like this’ just before he died at about 90.
LikeLike
There’s a very good piece by Patrick Cockburn in a recent London Review of Books about polio. He got in 1956 in Ireland.
LikeLike
One of favourites was watching an old dear pottering along (in a car) at about 10 kms p/h into a hotel car park in Bournemouth, and keep pottering along at the same speed until she hit the building.
LikeLike
Chimpie, There was a certain type of person who used to say, “Actually, I drive better after I’ve had a drink.”
LikeLike
My Grandad used to drive all day delivering fruit and veg until his late 60s, at which point he realised he had glaucoma and had to stop straight away. Which was a massive shock for someone as hyperactive as him who was used to working 18 hour days since he was 12, or something.
At that stage my granny was coming down with vascular dementia so he devoted himself to learning as much as he could about it, becoming very obsessed with finding some way of improving her condition. Being the stroppy and obsessive type he would end up arguing with doctors or anyone else he thought wasn’t doing the right thing by his Hilda. This really embarrassed and annoyed my Dad, but I was rather proud of him.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A modern version of the iron lung was recently suggested and developed as part of the ventilator challenge. It offers some advantages in that you don’t need to intubate the patient and put them into an induced coma. Didn’t go anywhere as far as I am aware.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/exovent-covid-19-ventilator/
LikeLike
He’s so smart:
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2020/05/dominic-cummings-press-conference-blog-predicted-covid-19-coronavirus
LikeLike
@chimpie
Yes, that’s a sad and uplifting and horrifying story – I’m old enough (1960) to remember children older than me wearing calipers but I don’t recall the fear and terror that it must have caused in the 1950s
…., and now I recall it the eldest son of a family who lived near us – he’d have been maybe 10 years older than me – walked with a barely perceptible limp that I later found out was due to polio. So, thanks to Messrs Salk and Sabin.
LikeLike
Don’t think the plague enthusiasts would be quite so enthusiastic if we still had all these infectious diseases about in such quantities.
LikeLike
Upminster’s finest Ian Dury was permanently disabled through polio. He did write this brilliant song related to his experiences, though
LikeLiked by 1 person
FDR as well. He got it as an adult.
LikeLike
Wotcha.
My great aunt had a hunchback from polio when she was young. She never married and I remember that it carried a stigma when she got it so it was really sad for her.
I can’t imagine the anti vaxxers flourishing then. Twats.
I found this which sums it up at the end.
LikeLike
Both parents are pretty shit drivers in their own ways. My dad always indicates as he’s turning not before. Staying in lane is optional when you are as important as him.
My mum seems to be in a constant state of mild confusion.
I’m, on the other hand, fucking amazing. Obviously.
LikeLike
When my Grandad and Granny got a new car it was an automatic. The 10 year old me explained to my Granny that although it was automatic it only had 4 gears. She looked at me confused and said “as many as that?” It turns out she’d been driving for years and had never realised there was a 4th gear.
LikeLiked by 1 person
While I’m on your side, there is a fairly recent case of a government using a vaccination programme for other ends:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/05/20/314231260/cia-says-it-will-no-longer-use-vaccine-programs-as-cover
LikeLike
My dad’s greatest skill as a driver is to be able to locate every rugby field in South Wales that he scored a try on. When we used to visit my Nan, we’d rocket up to the Severn Bridge and then slowly and gently meander through Monmouthshire and South Glamorgan and Mid-Glamorgan.
One time we drove past a rugby club somewhere and asked him why he hadn’t stopped and he said, “I made a couple of good breaks there but nothing much else.”
The other strange thing was the furthest west we ever drove was the River Neath. We inquired why wed never been to the Mumbles or even to Turkland and he blamed the fixture card of his old club. Neath Athletic and Aberavon Green Stars were as far that way that they ever went. We did hear lots and lots of stories about the game he played against Green Stars, who had ex-Welsh international Rory O’Connor in their side.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Tory minister has attack on conscience shock!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52802057
OK, he’s only a Junior Scotland Minister (and qualified referee) so miles down the food chain, but just wondering if this might encourage a few others to find a backbone.
LikeLike
I can also locate every rugby field I scored a try on.
LikeLike
Tomp making the case for limited government shocker.
LikeLike
There’s a long history of anti-vaccination campaigns, cragis: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination-movements
In Jonny Steinberg’s 3-Letter Plague he writes about how the fear of the needle caused big problems for society in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. He’s a very interesting writer on South Africa.
I had a quite strong interest in the anti-fluoridation campaigns a few years back. I vaguely remembered it from childhood and was surprised to learn how intense it had been.
LikeLiked by 1 person
‘A senior White House adviser to Donald Trump, Kevin Hassett, is being mercilessly ridiculed as a living parody of a box-ticking economist after he promoted an end to national lockdown measures in an interview with CNN by declaring: “Our human capital stock is ready to go back to work.”’
Yes I am ready to fulfil my economic function.
LikeLike
Unintended consequences – maybe a couple of years ago I heard an official from the NHS transplant organisation saying on a radio programme that they were very short of donor organs because of seat belts and general safety improvements in car breaking and suspension systems.
LikeLike
And I’d forgotten about this:
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/debunked-polio-vaccine-and-hiv-link
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n05/roy-porter/tissue-wars
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n07/edward-hooper/aids-and-the-polio-vaccine
LikeLike
Looking for a “A Newer Better Version of the Free Speech Union?”? Then the good people at the Campaign for Common Sense might be right up your rue.
LikeLike
This poor fella didn’t really think his question through:
LikeLike
This is a bit sad. Imagine the row if someone wanted to blow up something 46,000 years old in Europe.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/26/rio-tinto-blasts-46000-year-old-aboriginal-site-to-expand-iron-ore-mine
LikeLike
Tomp – I can understand why people might be skeptical just after they were invented but this more recent bs is more of a mystery. I guess if you can’t remember the diseases or don’t know anyone who had them then you might go down that path.
LikeLike
BTW tomp, thanks for the links. I will have a gander.
LikeLike
Sir Walter Scott has emailed me to comment on the awful campaign to malign poor young Mr Cummings:
LikeLiked by 10 people
Oh dear, DCI. Dissing yout future prime minister like that.
Big Wattie Scott had polio in childhood, fact fans.
LikeLike
Guy in his 80s who lives just down the road crashed into the lamp post outside our back garden a few weeks back
This guy did that in the 80s, except my incapacity was due to alcohol. 80s SA was lawless in that respect. Nowadays if we’re going to the pub up the road (less than 1/2 a mile) we’ll Uber. I’m a model citizen, as Alice Cooper will attest to.
LikeLike
“Actually, I drive better after I’ve had a drink.”
Cough. Student motto in the 80s here.
LikeLike
South African drivers are, um, aggressive is the best word I can use. Until they get to a 4-way stop. Then they’re perfect.
On the network of roads near where we lived there were mini roundabouts as junction controls. Regularly used to see cars and taxis turn right and cut across instead of going three-quarters of the way around the roundabout.
We had a security briefing from the SA police at my missus’s work. They said, “Don’t drive drunk. Better to call us and we’ll give you a lift.”
LikeLike
Deebs.
Why does this clip remind me of you and your home brew?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Slade has been looking through old speeches by the former MP for Chester and asked me to post this for your enjoyment. Do click on the link, it’s worth your time…
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2770myvg622j014/507c0875-920d-48ff-ae0a-cca3a9ab1af1.MP4?dl=0
LikeLiked by 4 people
Something has been bothering me since yesterday, and I can’t see anyone else is bothered by it, but anyway – Cummings appears, late, at a press conference in the Rose Garden in No.10. This is where Bill Clinton and Barak Obama have appeared, not to mention that Prime Ministers and new Cabinet members of various stripes have been photographed here, Cameron and Clegg got betrothed in the garden etc etc.
Cummings is not a civil servant and he is not an elected politician, but he deigns to turn up half an hour late in a rumpled crappy old open-necked shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
There is a tv series called Billions in which Damien Lewis plays a character called Bobby Axelrod, a man so powerful and rich that he wears Metallica t-shirts to boardroom meetings (he is friends with the band in the show), he does this to show that the rules don’t apply to him, he is untouchable,
Cummings does likewise, his whole statement was a sneer down his nose at the plebs who took “Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives” to mean what it said.
Why was this man given the platform of speaking from the garden of 10 Downing St?
Pie is back
LikeLiked by 6 people
Ticht – that was a positive penguin suit for Cummings!
Yeah, and apparently the code of conduct for spads is that they should never address the press directly, and most certainly not on controversial issues. Alastair Campbell (yes, I know) has been asking questions about this.
The creepiest thing for me that he sneaked out yesterday was that he didn’t discuss his whereabouts with the PM because he was busy dealing with x, y and ‘getting regulations out of the way’.
LikeLike
I think it was a projection of power, ticht. He’s literally behind what happens in Number 10.
LikeLike
Ticht
Jonathan Pie is new to me (Iknow, I know)………..
…………..but that was excellent. Thanks
LikeLike
This is very good:
https://crookedtimber.org/2020/05/26/fatherland/
LikeLiked by 3 people
Ha, unlike some journos & politicians, Pie has a lockdown hairdo. Slade, do check out his back catalogue.
LikeLike
@Ticht, I reckon the ‘seeing if he has sight’ excuse to drive to a sightseeing location is deliberate mockery, probably to prove how easy it is to act without conscience and morality to serve your own ends as long as you don’t flinch when telling the lie.
LikeLiked by 4 people
TomP – the mediaevals called it the Great Chain of Being.
No-one seems to have asked Cummings in public why his wife could not do the driving?
LikeLike
Thaum, not only why couldn’t she do the driving, no one is asking if the welfare of the child that caused them to drive to Durham was suddenly less of a concern when Cummings wasn’t sure if he could see well enough to drive.
LikeLike
Ticht – yeah, but that was clearly bollocks.
LikeLike
@Slade – that’s me and my homebrew to a tee!
LikeLike
Cummings? Pffft! We have a minister who is the ex-wife of the most corrupt man in post-apartheid South Africa banning the sale of cigarettes due to ‘health concerns’. She’s also the person who caused thousands of deaths by supporting a quack cure for AIDS called Virodene that was much like Trump’s hydrochloroquine. She tried to get the Medical control board dissolved to get her quackery into law.
Same minister has – remembering her vehement hatred of smoking – posed for photo ops in overseas trips with cigarette barons and smugglers, who allegedly supported her presidential bid. The same smugglers are making hundreds of millions of pounds from the now illegal sale of cigarettes imposed by this minister. You couldn’t make it up.
That said, Cummings needs to be destroyed politically and personally. He’s an absolute piece of shit.
LikeLiked by 4 people
JoeRobson writes BtL on John Crace’s latest:
The truth and lies are so mixed today, but I’ll put this out anyway ….
“I’ve heard that DC was going to complain to his MP about media harassment. His MP is … Jeremy Corbyn”
LikeLiked by 2 people
A headline to cheer everyone up:
America’s Never-Ending Battle Against Flesh-Eating Worms
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-eating-worms-disease-containment-america-panama/611026/
LikeLike