Mastertronic Games
This link – Mastertronic Bestsellers – will show you three charts showing the top-selling Mastertronic games across all of its released formats as well as total number of releases year-on-year for the various 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum during the peak years of Mastertronic’s game releases and it’s nice to see just how popular such titles as Finders Keepers and Molecule Man – two of my favourites – really...
British Museum Underground Station
A few years old but a great read with some excellent photos documenting the admittedly illegal and dangerous exploration of the London Underground system in search of the now-closed British Museum station. British Museum Abandoned Station, London I ran off down to the Eastbound Piccadilly platform, and nervously hopped onto the platform, and looked for the signs for the Central line. I went through the platform exit, down the stairs, along a short passage, and then into an escalator hall. Powering my way up the non-moving escalators, I came out at the top, and then had to cross another escalator hall. The bottom of these escalators were all taped off with red and white tape. Thankfully there was no one about, and I dropped down the stairs to the Central line. Turning left I was on the Westbound platform. It was empty. I ran for the end of the platform, absolutely shattered at this point. A final look back, and I hopped off the platform, and into the darkened...
Lunchboxes
The always entertaining Flashbak website presents a large of collection of lunchboxes from the 1970s across two articles here and here. As a taster, here’s my favourite from the selection: I wasn’t familiar with the Doctor Dolittle story before and had never had any intention to change the state of affairs but now I know there’s a giant pink sea snail in it I might just have to keep an eye...
Starcrash: The Greatest Movie Of All Time?
Well, that’s the assertion of Stephen Romano in this article from 2012: All of these disparate elements come together in a film that is at once confounding and bizarre and campy-as-hell… and classy, too. I could go on and on about all that—high art versus low art, the value of pop culture as commercial entertainment, the collision of visuals carved from hunks of pure green...
Lady Hester Stanhope
A short biography of Lady Hester Stanhope (1776-1839), someone I’d not actually heard of but who Wikipedia describes as “a British socialite, adventurer and traveler.” She sounds rather fantastic, if not a little bit eccentric. Lady Hester Stanhope, Queen of the Desert: As she traveled throughout the Middle East, Lady Hester was received royally whereever she and her party went. She was received in state by the Pasha, Mehmet Ali, in Cairo. She traveled to Jerusalem and Acre, and other little known citites. When she reached Damascus, Lady Hester refused to wear the veil or change out of her men’s clothes to enter the city, despite the warnings she received that it was an anti-Christian community. Instead she rode in, unveiled at midday. The people of Damascus didn’t know what hit them, but their amazement turned to enthusiasm and she was hailed as a Queen. An interesting, very headstrong woman and a very good read but one that only briefly touches on a part of her archaeological work. For more on that, though, another article on Lady Hester Stanhope well worth a read is this one: Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope: The First Modern Excavator of the Holy Land.. The start to Stanhope’s excavation began when she came into possession of a “curious document”, which was a supposed medieval Italian manuscript that described the location of a hidden treasure buried under mosque in Ashkelon by Christians. Apparently, the manuscript was very detailed and Ashkelon was well-known as the ruins of an ancient port city. Stanhope didn’t merely march into Ashkelon and begin ripping the place apart. She submitted a request to the Ottoman government for permission and was granted the right to excavate the...
Genetically Modified Organisms
Everyone knows that genetically modified foods are bad for you, right? I mean, they must be because non-governmental organisations such as Friends of the Earth say so and just look at their name! They’re “friends” of the Earth for flip’s sake and “friends” never get things wrong or lie, do they? It’s very easy to believe “friends” and other NGOs, and it’s very easy to disbelieve the government. However, just believing something doesn’t make it right. Putting beliefs aside for the moment if you want to actually know whether GM crops are safe to eat it’s best to consult scientific bodies as they won’t (generally) have any ulterior motive in disseminating falsehoods. An article titled Why NGOs Can’t Be Trusted On GMOs explains more, pointing out as well how some NGOs use wordplay to spin the message away from the facts and towards a biased, unscientific, unsupported standpoint. Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm wrote on the Just Label It website that “all the research conducted around the safety of genetically engineered crops has been funded by the GMO patent holders themselves.” […] Hirshberg’s claim is wrong. […] The European Commission spent more than 200m euros of public funds on GMO research between 2001 and 2010. The EU summarizes about 50 studies in this 264-page report, which is easily found online. The article is concise, balanced, and most likely will be completely ignored by those who have already made up their minds that genetically modified food is dangerous. But that’s probably a build up of pesticides on apples forming a knowledge shield around their brains if I had to hazard a...
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