Time to get off the fence BO!

So it’s not just republicans that’ll do the exact opposite of whatever it is you suggest, now it seems the entire population of a north African country have been driven to violence by your insipid legal speak.

The latest events in Egypt are depressing, women and children are being murdered by a regime propped up by your government and desperate to hold onto power. The sad truth for you (and us) is that you, Mr. President, are better placed than anyone else on earth to deal with this situation - You could do something about it, but instead choose not to, and to all intent and purpose you remain quiet.

You could have called for the switching on of the Internet in your Tuesday address, which could’ve become your very own ‘Tear Down This Wall’ moment, but more importantly it would’ve allowed the people of Egypt some relief from the constant fear that a media/communications blackout generates. It would've offered them a chance to actually understand what was happening around them, but you couldn’t even go that far. You asked for a transition of power without offering who that should be transferred to, or from for that matter. You asked that things needed to change ‘now’ but refused to mention Mubarak by name. And finally you demanded that any transition be ‘peaceful’ as if the Egyptian people had any say in the matter, and as if the people would’ve wanted anything other than a peaceful end.

Like a first world war British general you are masterful at leading from the rear, and here in the US, whether we voted for you or not, we have long understood that your preferred position on anything is not to have a preferred position. You’ll sit firmly on whatever fence you can clamber up and bide your time smiling down at people as they pass in one direction or the other. I’m almost impressed by your complete lack of backbone, I mean it seems you’re so afraid of a fight that you’d rather expend your energy staying on a wobbly fence in the middle than sliding off to side or the other. Just as long as it keeps you out of harms way, and above any flying fists.

The problem is the rest of the world haven't realized this yet, and many, like most Americans, still believe that the world looks to the US president as the leader of the free world. Now, although ‘free’ seems to have become a matter of perception, you can still prove that the term leader is still applicable when it comes to you.

Although you probably feel like you shot the gun and went too far, the rest of the world are still trying to work out what that hedging language actually meant and find out where you stand on the Egyptian crisis.

I have no doubt that you’re secretly crapping yourself about Mubarak’s obstinacy, especially as it now looks like he’s gonna be hanging on for another 70 years or so. But, for once think of the people before the political ambitions of you and Axelrod, and instead of worrying about clawing back long lost credibility with Mubarak and the rest of the middle-east, how about coming out with real tangible support for those peaceful demonstrators and their children?

There's no doubt that you're the master of the ambiguous, and doing too little too late, but for once be the candidate the US people voted for and slide down off that fence.

Mars - One Way Missions NOT Suicide!

It’s clear that the ‘To Boldly Go’ article written by a couple of big-brained Star Trek fans has been causing quite a kafuffle and scaring a lot of people who care about astronauts. But, Pants feels that it can help calm a few nerves.

We’ve identified the root of people's concern as being the boffins’ proposed one-way missions to Mars, which for those of us who care dearly about the welfare of astronauts is a frightening prospect. But after Pants experts took a closer look at the language used by the eggheads we quickly realized that something had been lost in translation.

All along both brainy’s have stressed that it was important not to see their proposal as being ‘suicide missions’...You see NOT a suicide mission.

It can make all the difference understanding the subtle scientific nuances between the egghead mission and a suicide mission. In the egghead version one is merely required to “stay for the rest of his life” in order to fulfill it, but in a suicide mission one is required to die!

Also, they likened their astronauts going to Mars “with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives” to the endeavors of early US settlers who set out in their wagons with very little prospect of ever returning.

So, we’d like to propose a exercise to help those most affected: Try to imagine the astronaut’s spaceships as being space wagons, it really helps...go on try it!

Here at Pants we feel the missions are a great idea, and coming from people who've always put the welfare of astronauts front and center, it should mean something.

The colonization of Mars is planned as insurance against any future catastrophic event on earth, and that makes complete sense.

The boffins said that Mars would offer humanity a “lifeboat” in the event Earth becomes uninhabitable. Although they don’t go into too much (any) detail on how they’d get us all on the “lifeboat”, it’ll probably involve quite a lot of them. So, lets hope they’ve learned lessons from the past - Titanic - and don't end up having too few, or the space wagons will get really cramped.

Anyhoo, they aim to start by sending two two-person teams in separate space wagons, and due to the NON-suicide nature of the mission its participants will not be returning to Earth, so the teams will include people over the age of 60. Also, as the planet’s radiation would normally damage human reproductive organs, NASA has had to find a man and a woman whose reproductive tackle can survive intense radiation.

Thanks to our source inside NASA Pants can reveal the names slated for berths in the first space wagon as Dancing With The Stars star Bristol Palin's mum Sarah and Joe Leiberman. Their primary task will be to procreate, and start a species able to withstand the planet’s significant radiation. We’ll post the FSSP (factual scientific special picture) showing exactly how future Homo-Martians will look as soon as we receive it.

It is said that between procreation sessions with Leiberman Palin will use the opportunity to study Mars’ lack of an O-Zone, which she aims to use as the basis of a thesis called 'Mars lost its O-Zone without a single Martian driving a hummer', providing proof for her long held position that global warming and the destruction of our O-zone layer has nothing to do with man but is all Mother Nature’s fault and merely a catastrophic natural cycle...just so we know.

We'll keep you up on events as we get them.

WTF was that Fraudley?

So, I'm not a fanatical fight fan, and definitely no expert boxing critic, but I do like watching the occasional big fight when I can, and the Haye/Harrison contest on Saturday night seemed to fit the bill. It was only the fifth time in history that a world heavyweight championship would feature two Brits, and as it was being billed as the ‘Battle of Britain’ I just couldn't resist.

NB: To those of you unfamiliar with the nuances of the great and honourable sport of boxing it may appear as if Audley is merely running scared, but I have it on good authority (Audley) that his version of 'Bringing the Heat' involves turning his back on his opponent with his arms flailing in the air behind him. It's intended to lure his oponent into a flase sense of security, sadly for Audley this time it only succeeded in luring David Haye into a secure sense of security

The term Battle of Britain was originally used to retrospectively describe an air battle in which the Royal Air Force whooped the arses (that’s how we say it in Britland) of the previously all-conquering Luftwaffe. The surprise attack was aimed at destroying the RAF’s ability to mount an air defense of Britain in advance of a future Nazi invasion, and it nearly succeeded. The Luftwaffe's significant numeric advantage was increased as the surprise attack succeeded in destroying a large part of the RAF even before they could get air born.

However, the Germans failed to account for the fact that they were attacking men of British birth, an error they've repeated through history, and when these few good men, these compatriots of God did get air born they countered the nasty nazis numeric advantage with superior valor, honor and strength. They also received a little help from a few archangels on whose wings they flew to defeat their miserable foe.

Somehow over the years instead of being used to describe a conflict between Brits and Johnny foreigners, the Battle of Britain has been painfully overused by promoters and media to describe any sporting contest between Brits. But, as hackneyed as the term has become its use in context with the Haye/Harrison debacle on Saturday was almost as intolerable as it was inaccurate. It would be erroneous to describe that spectacle as anything remotely relating a battle.

I got hooked on boxing as a youngster watching legends like Ali, Frazier, and Norton and was fortunate enough to witness the great middleweight bouts of the 80s involving Hagler, Hearns and Leonard, and I was there for the reignition of the heavyweight division with the breathtaking arrival of a young Mike Tyson.

Being British I've been spoiled with some genuine home grown gladiators like Benn, Eubanks, Michael Watson and the lightening fast Herol 'Bomber' Graham. We even had an undisputed world heavyweight champion in Lennox Lewis; a legitimate challenger to the likes of Tyson and Holyfield.

But, being a hugely biased British boxing fan, since Lewis's retirement there's been very little worth watching in the heavyweight division, and a match-up between an untested Cruiserweight called David Haye and a perpetually suspect contender called Audley Harrison wasn't gonna change my opinion. But, the hype dammit!

Audrey won an amature boxing medal once, which is something Lennox Lewis did, so he got it in his head that he'd be able to emulate Lewis. The problem was Audley wasn't talented like Lewis and unlike Lewis who won his amatuer medal as a teenager, Audley waited until he was almost 30 before winning his.

To cut a very tiresom story short, Audley would make all the right noises out of the ring, but only grunts of pain once he got into it, he was useless.

Here's Audley's pre-fight interview....



Still, regardless of what he did in the ring the hype machine kept on rolling ensuring that thousands of Brits would show up to watch him struggle to an unconvincing points victory over some one eyed 50 year old. Invariably these 'fans' would boo Audley out of the ring at the end of each fight, knowing that they'd just been had, again. Many paying good money in the hope that Audley got nailed.

Here's the first two rounds of the Haye/Harrison world championship debacle....



and here's round three and the TKO of Audrey....



Let's just hope that Audley's own words (taken from an apology he released to press today)....

"I make no excuses and I'm not sure where I go from here in boxing, but I'll lick my wounds, take some time out with my family and see what I want to do.

...are the words of a man in denial and not an indication that he's seriously considering his options....there can't be any options left for Audrey in professional boxing, can there?

Missile/Plane/UFO thingy over LA - 'Nothing to see here, move along now' say the experts - So, why do I feel scared?

You’ve probably noticed the deluge of boffins on TV over the past few days telling us that there was absolutely nothing mysterious about that thing that looked an awful lot like a missile flying over Los Angeles on Monday . No, apparently it wasn't anything of the sort, and all that video showed was nothing more than the vapor of a run of the mill old airplane...Really!

I mean, who are you gonna believe? the cable news pundits or your lying eyes?

Well, I'd like to think that normally my conspiratorial mindset would’ve found something ever-so-slightly fishy about all of it, but fortunately I don't have to wonder whether it was a airplane or not, because I know that it wasn’t, because I fucking saw it.

Yup! Jo and I saw the fucking thing and it definitely was not an airplane.

We were taking our usual neighborhood stroll at around 8.40pm on Monday night when Jo said ‘look!’ she didn’t have to point because directly to the south of us (we were on Hobart Ave walking south between James M Wood and San Mareno) coming from the west was what looked like a rocket.

We only watched it for a second or so, but it was enough to give us the impression that it was a missile of some sort. It was on a sharp downward trajectory coming from the west (we were looking south) and it was fast, like a shooting star, but far closer, bigger and lower. All we could see of it was the burning exhaust coming from a single outlet at its rear, and as it neared the ground the burning stopped, which made it invisible to us against the night sky. It was as if an engine had been turned off, or the fuel had burned out (like a firework does), and as soon as the burning stopped we expected it to hit the ground and we instinctively braced ourselves for what we believed was going to be an impact explosion, but nothing happened. There was no explosion or any sign of burning on the ground in the distance.

It was really weird and as we walked home a little shaken we met a neighbor and joked with him that we’d just seen a UFO.

I know I’m already in danger of being accused of being a nut, but before I go on I should point out that we live in Koreatown, which is pretty much smack bang in the middle of LA, and we’re well used to seeing planes circling at night, but this:
· Had no lights other than a single burning exhaust, and generally the planes flying over our heads don’t have burning exhaust coming from a single engine at the back of it.
· Was traveling significantly faster than a plane waiting to land.
· Was coming virtually straight down.

In short our sighting was no airplane, and we were obviously keen to find out what the thing was, but we couldn’t find any reference to it on the news that evening. The following morning (yesterday/Tuesday) was a different story.

Coverage of the ‘mysterious event over Los Angeles’ was everywhere. At first we were relieved as other people had obviously seen the thing too, so we weren’t going crazy, but any hope that we’d be offered some rational explanation soon evaporated as ‘expert’ after expert across the networks told the unconvincing story that it was an airplane.

All the networks were showing the same video (below), which had been at dusk taken somewhere to the west of us. They say their video was taken at 8.35pm and we saw the thing at around 8.40pm east of where they had filmed it. If this was the same object then we’d seen it against the night sky minutes later. What’s really disturbing is that the timing and trajectory of the thing on the video fits perfectly with our sighting and what we saw didn’t look, or behave anything like a plane. Also, assuming it remained on the same trajectory we saw it coming down on it must’ve crashed somewhere south of central LA.

For the last three days we’ve become more troubled by the response as we watch commentator after commentator get it wrong. Rachael Maddow jokingly surmised on her show that it couldn’t possibly have been a missile because if it were then all of LA would’ve seen it, and consequently been freaked out until they found out why it had been fired. Well, although I can’t speak for the rest of the population Jo and I did see something over Los Angeles on Monday night, and we believed it to be a missile, and it was coming down, not going up, and yes Rachael my partner and I were, and remain more than a tad concerned by what we saw.

Perhaps worst of all was reading a posting on the MSNBC website yesterday (Wednesday) titled ‘Pentagon solve LA mystery’. I clicked on the story fully expecting to read that it had all been the fault of some brilliant if not slightly disturbed amateur scientist, but instead only got the Pentagon’s assurance that they were now ‘sure’ it was an airplane.

I mean even if I hadn’t seen the fucking thing myself I’d have been worried by the press release because it’s weak. I mean seriously is being ‘sure it was a plane’ the best the Pentagon can do? Just because more experts had told them so, well fuck me sideways with a fish fork! I mean more experts were ‘sure’….WTF!

If it were a plane the Pentagon would be able to do a LOT better than just making an unsupported claim that they were ‘sure’, they would’ve ‘confirmed’ it. You know! With the fucking license number, time of departure and destination, and a fucking interview with the pilot who’d apologise to everyone for freaking them out, and admitting to flying directly up on a squiggly line and then descending at full speed on a fucking 80 degree angle towards South Central LA before pulling out of the ditch just in time, and all for the fuck of it….Oh yeah! and he’d been flying a special kind of plane that traveled ten times faster than other planes and it used a single rocket at the back of it!

They would’ve prepared simulations of the route and shown how the ‘optical illusion’ had been caused. But, they didn’t and the reason they didn’t is because IT WASN’T A FUCKING PLANE.

So, what the fuck was it then?

UK Election - Hung Parliament could be just what we need!

It doesn’t matter how much Mr Murdoch may want to paint the prospect of Gordon Brown forming the next government as being undemocratic, he’s simply wrong.

First, it’s Gordon Brown’s constitutional right, but perhaps more importantly if Mr Brown were to form a government it would invariably comprise a true coalition of parties from across the United Kingdom. What’s more they’d collectively represent somewhere in the region of 60% of the electorate, a greater margin even than that achieved by Barack Obama's current administration. I doubt the UK would’ve had such a representative government in years, and sounds like the perfect solution for governing through such a tricky period in our history.

There’s no fault in our system, this is what our friends and neighbors have voted for. Long live true democracy!

Dylan Ratigan and Steven Hawkin...phew!

That was a close....I flicked on MSNBC trying to catch up on a bit of news, and instead got blasted by Dylan Ratigan (the MSNBC Glen Beck wannabe) using confusing (and poor) analogies about banks and government bail outs. Anyhoo, so I was about to switch off and continue contemplating my naval when Rati shouted something about next up being Stephen Hawking warning about alien contact.

There was more than the usual hint of smug in his voice and so for a moment I thought it meant that I'd be witnessing the ignominy of Ratigan loudly debasing professor Hawking, unarguably one of humanity's greatest ever minds. I guess should’ve switched off then and there, my brain police were screaming at me to 'move along now, there’s nothing to see or learn here sir'. But, it was too late, my masochistic curiosity had been piqued; how would Rati's psuedo-intellect go about defaming a real thinker?

Alas, there was no need to worry, someone on the show had advised him not to question the professor, but simply pass on his observations.

The kafuffle was over an opinion the prof had offered in a new (Discovery Channel) show of his called Into The Universe. Apparently he'd suggested that it may not be the wisest thing for humanity to try and make contact with other intelligent alien civilizations, concluding that any we made contact with were likely to be nomadic and looking to colonize a planet. Therefore it was probably best to keep quiet in the first place.

Dylan played it safe by displaying a little of the skepticism of science that is expected of all God fearing Americans. He scoffed slightly as he pointed out the shocking findings of a formula called The Drake Equation, which scientists use to work out the probability of the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way...numbers were crunched and the formula spewed out the likely number of intelligent societies as...drum roll...wait for it...10,000!

Dylan's reaction was no different to the rest of the US media who found themselves caught between a number of contradictions. Sensitive to the fact that we don't live in the 1950s anymore, they were unsure whether to laugh off the suggestion of there being other intelligent life out there or, scoff at the professor for inferring that the US military couldn't handle them if they did exist.

It's a different world today and humankind has moved on, and there's something scary about Professor Hawking speaking matter-of-factly about the existence of aliens. Furthermore he wasn't on about friendly ET types, but the nasty Mars Attacks/War of the Worlds type.

Ten fucking thousand and that’s just in our little galaxy!

Academic's butt hole stuns Bogotá...years ago

Today I watched a Sundance documentary about Bogotá, famous for Pablo , cocaine, coffee and beautiful coffee colored women on coke. Anyway, the film follows Bogotá's transformation by an unlikely force - a politician.

Back in the mid-90s philosopher mathematician Antanas Mockus was the little known and less liked vice-chancellor of the Colombian National University in Bogotá. Antanas had been minding his own business doing the stuff that unpopular chancellors did when he was confronted by an angry mob of students fed up with his too clever by half, mathy, philosophicy ways. Unable to defend himself with fancy long words as someone had taken his microphone away, Antanas did what any cornered academic would...he mooned. Or, more specifically he turned around, dropped his pants, bent over, and very deliberately spread his cheeks flashing his arse to a stunned auditorium. Hours later the evening news had begun broadcasting his butt hole to a wider audience and within a matter of days the entire population of Columbia had become acquainted with his sphincter.

His bosses at the university weren't best pleased with his actions and despite protestations from his mother (whom Antanas still lived with) forced him to resign as vice chancellor.

So, without money, a job, or much prospect of finding one, the man notorious for flashing his butt at a bunch of students decided to run for election as Mayor of Bogotá and launched his campaign from the small apartment he shared with his mum. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the fair and open-minded people of Bogotá chose to give poor Antanas a second chance and consequently elected him to office.

Early 90s Bogotá was a place consumed with violence. Controlled by crooked cops and politicians on the take, the city had become grid locked with corruption, but Antanas had other ideas.

First, he took on the culture of violence head on by convincing people that it was better to be a ‘carrot’ than a coke baron, which makes complete sense to me. Then, he moved against the city’s traffic congestion by handing out ‘thumbs up’ J stickers to drivers that yielded at traffic lights, and ‘thumbs down’ L stickers to those that didn’t. Sure, some would say that Antanas was struggling to shake the teacher in him, but who wouldn’t want to have a thumbs up sticker, eh?

Next, in the flowery firing line were Bogotá’s traffic police who were renowned for taking on the spot bribes. Mayor Antanas approached the city council with an ingenious plan, he would fire the lot of them, and naturally only re-hire those who’d agree to enroll in mime classes….yes, mime classes….mime, as in that form of painted face entertainment considered by most to be even duller than clowning, and thought to have only one performer that French bloke (the late) Marcel Marceau. Still, Bogata’s council members could see its brilliance and wasted no time voting the Mayor’s plan into law.

Most cops simply couldn’t face explaining to their wives that the bribe money had dried up, and that they’d getting home later than usual because of night school. After years on the take in one of the toughest urban environments on earth their badass gun wielding husbands were gonna enroll at school to learn how to mime around make belief sheets of glass. Of course, with the vast majority of the force refusing to go along with the Mayor’s demands, Bogotá was left with no traffic department.

Now, most industrial cities would be brought to its knees if its entire traffic department quit, but the core of Mayor Antanas’ plan was to replace the fired cops with professional mime artists. Immediately the media and the people saw the simple genius of the plan - professional mime artists needed no training, so they were a silent force ready to roll. What’s more, the fact they needed no training meant the city would save shit loads of cash too.

Within days the new and newly trained old police were at work on the mean streets of Bogotá pretending to sit on seats that weren’t there.

Mayor Antanas had managed to transform Bogotá from a vibrant, dangerously exciting city full of life and death to a bourgeois academic’s idyll of quiet streets policed by silent mimes, with fucking loads of clean parks, and silent libraries full of books about pottery, civil engineering and Ghandi, and it all started with some do-gooder math teacher flashing his shitty crack…..unbelievable, but TRUE!

and here's Antanarse...


Filmed by Andreas Møl Dalsgaard Bogotá is part of The Danish Film Institute's Cities On Speed series.