The Great Sheds of Bedfordshire

Almost every time I pass Bedford on the A421, I make a mental note that I must visit the mighty airship sheds at Cardington as I whizz past them on the way to somewhere else. I haven't got round to it yet, but as you can see here, they're pretty impressive structures. The two most famous residents of the Cardington Sheds were the Vickers R100, designed by Barnes Wallis and N S Norway (better known by his pen-name, Neville Shute) and the Royal Airship Works' ill-fated R101. The crash of the R101 on an attempted trial flight to India in 1930 did for the British airship industry what the later loss of the Hindenberg did for Germany's Zeppelins.

Here's a short film about the R101.

The Eagle Has Landed (in South Kensington)

The Science Museum's putting on a fantastic-looking exhibition for schoolboys and nerds of all ages. A glorious pageant of techno-optimism from the cutting edge of the new Elizabethan Age - check out the Fairey Rotodyne in the top illustration. I believe there's a book of the Eagle's collected cut-aways out there, which I must track down some time. I'm sure my little boy will appreciate it when he reaches the appropriate age - well, that's my excuse, anyway.

I'm in the sky...

There's quite a lot of "conceptual" art out there which I don't get. But the Sky Ear looks like a brave stab at doing something just a little more interesting. Wish I'd seen (and heard) it..

Widow Maker

A bit of aerospace stuff here about the 1960's Lockeeed bribery scandal as a reminder that all the BAE skulduggery with the Saudis, although deplorable, is nothing new in the arms trade.

And here's a German tribute to one of the results of that deal - Germany's adoption of the Lockheed F104 Strafighter, dubbed the "widow maker" for its accident record.

The previously anticipated computer replacement should be happening tomorrow; what with that and other activities, there will probably be a short blogopause.

See you after the hot flushes.

Icy beauty

There are quite a few photo albums being shared on line these days, but few can match the chilling, austere, inhuman beauty of this one.

Steam Leviathans

We're going on holiday to Somerset in September. Here's a visitor attraction I'd love to see, time and toddler permitting - Isambard Kingdom Brunel's pioneering iron-hulled steamship, the SS Great Britain. It's a great pity that his later design, the ill-starred but awesome Great Eastern didn't survive into the 21st (or even 20th) Century - that really would be a sight to behold.

Radovan Karadžić and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Fantastic news on several levels; former Supreme Commander of the Bosnian armed forces, the butcher of Srebrenica, Radovan Karadžić has been captured and charged with war crimes.

And just in case anyone was still tempted to take the genocidal maniac seriously, it turns out that the vicious old loon has been in hiding disguised in a long white beard and practising as a a purveyor of "alternative" medicine. Is it too much to hope that the idea of this horrible man peddling healing crystals, iridology, colonic irrigation and similar old blather will kill two birds with one stone, discrediting the merchant of death and the mumbo-jumbo merchants in equal measure? I was wondering what sort of alternative treatments the old fraud was specialising in - ethnic cleansing of your aura or something? The answer to my question is at hand - at the Harry's Place blog some digging's been done and the website of the company he was working for, "Psy Help Energy" (the "psy" presumably being short for "psychopath") has been uncovered. Glorious.