From the BBC:

It has emerged that the crew of a Nimrod used a teapot to block a hatch gap in their plane after a mid-air mechanical fault.

An RAF Kinloss spokeswoman said there was a malfunction with a hatch from which sonar buoys are thrown during search and rescue missions.

The spokeswoman said: “There was a minor malfunction with the hatch cover and the teapot would have been used to make it more comfortable for the crew.

A teapot! These guys are on a state of the art (well, for the 1970s) electronic warfare platform, and they have a teapot. An aluminium one at that (see, I told you it was state of the art).

Last year I noted that the traditional way to mark the patron saint of England’s day was to forget until the following day. Being back here I’m happy to report that things have picked up somewhat; I’m not sure it’s quite a St Patrick’s day, but there were events in the village on Saturday, and the local pubs are encouraging people to go out and celebrate today. How noble of them.

A better rant than I could come up with on the natural fallout from the VT shootings (though created for 9/11):

Of course the World Trade Center bombings are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct. Although what is done can never be undone, the fact remains that if the world were organised according to my political views, this tragedy would never have happened.

(HT: BoingBoing)

It’s been interesting in the last day to watch the coverage of the terrible shootings in Virginia. There is a universal response of “When will America do something about it’s gun culture? Why do they implicitly accept this sort of thing?” That’s a pretty understandable reaction from various op-ed contributors, but even a programme like Newsnight, notable for its desire to ‘catch out’ government of any stripe, led with a headline something like “America’s love of guns gets 31 students killed” (I’m exaggerating, but not by much).

I don’t disagree with the sentiment, unsurprisingly, having been brought up in the UK. It does highlight the additional sensitivity I feel at such events having lived in the US though; to some extent I’ll always think of it as my ‘other’ country, so things that happen there are more real to me than in other countries. So while I’m waiting for the initial breathlessness of the event to recede before the pointless back-and-forth over the 2nd Amendment restarts, the average person in the UK already has that level of detachment to start with. It’s no credit to me that I feel this way; as many have pointed out, 33 deaths is almost certainly a quiet day in Baghdad, and I find it easy not to dwell on those unfortunates.

Here’s a slightly uncomfortable, but very worthwhile, account of why celebrity is not an excuse for bad behaviour, but is also not a reason for mockery. Unlikely as it might seem, it comes from Craig Ferguson.