At a dressage competition my wife was doing I sat on the top of a bank in front of an electric fence. After a while I leaned against the fence so I was nicely earthed then put my head against the electric fence wire. It felt like a giant rock had fallen from the sky onto the back of my head.

Relax got banned from daytime airplay on Radio 1 in the UK, thanks to Mike Read, a R1 DJ more interested in the sound of his own voice than in music. Relax was an absolutely massive hit here, one of the highest ever selling singles in the UK.

John M Scalzi? With the 'M' being both appropriate (if Wikipedia is to be believed) and having an honourable precedent for an alternate name for an SF author.

Boroughmuir and James Gillespie’s are probably always oversubscribed. Also, I doubt anyone outside their catchment areas is going to get a place. The cost of moving into their catchments would be way higher than the VAT on the school fees.

That is the exact opposite of a little brown bird.

Boston Dynamics were showing videos of their robots coping with being forcefully shoved eight or nine years ago. These aren't anywhere near that point.

(Lisp programmer (in a previous life))

Same here. I get the Oysterband's "Flatlands" playing in my head when I see photos of the Fens or Cambridgeshire.

And if it's been a while since you've refreshed your memory, go search "drowning doesn't look like drowning" and watch the videos a few times, because people seriously have no idea. slate.com/technology/2...

I always liked Steve Martin's suggestion that the alien response to the Golden Record would be "Send more Chuck Berry".