On the beach.

At very short notice, I spent last night on Portobello beach.

This, I suppose, was a replacement for the (Legendary? Infamous?) SFSoc Cramond Island solstice allnighters, to suit those of us who have to be at work in the morning. I got picked up before nine by Lara, Seth and Adele and by a bit after nine we were on Portobello beach with Mo. A few minutes later Eireann, Sharon and Alex joined us. The tide was still well out, beyond the end of the groynes, but we dumped everything just above what we took to be the high-water mark and S&L set to making a fire. It was soon crackling away merrily and we sat down to admire the fading light over Fife.

The next several hours were spent beside an eerily calm sea, as it rose and then started to ebb, chasing us a few feet back by being (only slightly) more enthusiastic than the day before, as the sky darkened and then lightened again, the lights from Fife, East Lothian and passing aircraft and ships twinkled, Alex and Seth took strange long-exposure photographs and made pig-nipple sandcastles using a roadcone as a mould. We got buzzed by passing swans and marauding naturists (there's a lot of that down there, apparently, after dark - Alex got accused of chasing them for photos until he pointed out that he'd had his camera set up pointing across the bay before they'd turned up and actually he was waiting for them to leave) and spotted a flare (probably from the coastguard - Lara phoned in to report it and they were already out there looking for a boat).

There were a couple of other groups, one aparently French, but they all left well before daybreak, so by the end it was just us and our fire.

When it got light, the five of us remaining (Mo, E &S having left) came back via Arthur's Seat to see the view over the city and out along the coast.

Adele's take is here. I don't think they were geese.

It was full daylight when I got to bed. A small number of hours' sleep later, here I am, suprisingly awake. I don't think I'll be out late tonight, though.

My Friend Mr Leakey.

Bloody hell. "My Friend Mr Leakey" (by titan of population genetics, and occasional children's author, JBS Haldane) is back in print. Top google hit is this one, oddly, but I'm sure other retailers are available.

Part of it can be found here, and there might be a PDF with illustrations if you dig about. This is an absolutely delightful book, and as it's been out of print since about 1973 I'm very pleased to see it reappear.

Allegedly it was the first appearance in print of his famous saying "The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

Now, I have an old copy . . . do I want to buy another one simply to lend people? Decision, decisions.

Hairyplanes

Linked from /., The Onion, 2056 edition.

Also, a U-2 has crashed in an unnamed Middle-Eastern country returning from Afghanistan. Interesting that it's an unnamed country ("due to host nation sensitivities"). So where do U2s fly out of in the area? Saudi Arabia? Or somewhere on the other side? They've apparently been flown in and from Georgia in the last couple of years. [Gaaa. Read the bloody article, Graham. Abu Dhabi. But did it come down there or in Iran or Pakistan?]

Incidentally, if any of you are looking for further proof that military pilots have no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, here it is.

Hangman again.

Book and Film

Rumblefish

wehmuth wins.

Hangman, again.

Play, and film

Rosencrantz/And/Guildenstern/Are/Dead

Correctly worked out purely from length by nisaba