Talking of Hitler…

We're all friends now. And for Airdrie United, a soldier's a soldier. Take a look at their matchday programme from Remembrance Day:

That Hitler and his flying saucers…

Yes children, today's the day that the Daily Mail took a break from peddling racist and misogynist nonsense, and dived deep into the Great Pool Of Lunacy, deeper than it's ever been.

Hitler's secret flying saucer: Did the Führer plan to attack London and New York in UFOs?

Well, did he? Er, no. No he didn't.

The idea of building flying saucers to bomb London and even New York could have been just such a scheme.

It goes on to speculate wildly, including a rather fanciful picture of a flying saucer onto which they painted an Iron Cross, and some pictures 'from the internet'.

Convinced me.

(Let's not forget that if the Nazi Flying Saucers had made it to London, they'd have been welcomed with open arms by the newspaper that supported them right through the 1930s, one Daily Mail).

Guten Morgen, ich bin deine Lehrer

I met the new students of English today. They are, of course, a delight, though I have to ask: what is it with Nazis, guys? Favourite book, The Diary of Anne Frank, favourite film, Schindler's List etc. etc. etc. Clearly the A-level curriculum is run by somebody very weird indeed…

Blog your way to unemployment

I'm fairly outspoken here on Plashing Vole, particularly on work matters, but I tend to 'play the ball, not the man', as the saying goes. It's a good job too: my sister in Dublin sent me this piece about a court case between a lecturer and his college president (vice-chancellor equivalent), part of which centres on the lecturer's blog, which turned rather nasty:

A ROW between a college lecturer and his university boss boiled over onto the internet when a web blog called on the president to reveal whether his father was a member of the Nazi party.

The Nazi reference appeared in a blog in September last year. It said it was time the professor revealed whether his father was a member of the Nazi party, if he fought in World War II and whether he was coerced or was a willing participant.

If you believe… they put a man on the moon

Sorry for the REM reference

Today, as the Guardian's special section reminds me, is the fortieth anniversary of the moon landings. How do you feel about it? Ten years ago, I had nothing but awe for such an amazing achievement - and I still feel that way for the most part. However, in between, I've done a lot of reading. I've learned how the space programme was motivated solely by a need to dominate the Soviets, about how it was manned by pretty unrepentant Nazi rocket scientists drawing on the skills developed in the 1940s, about how it cost a massive chunk of the US GNP, and how its scientific benefits have been massively overexaggerated by NASA spinners.

The Soviets took a pragmatic approach: near earth orbits are great for science, there's nothing on the moon. So did the Europeans for that matter - manned space flight is like getting a taxi down to the shops. We might make Mars but that's as far as it goes, so let's put our energy into satellites, telescopes and probes.

And yet - the romance lingers, perhaps even intensified by the failure of our space race. Once the cold war ended, it turned out that the motivation (and money) dissipated. Instead, we're in the post-space age. Will our grandchildren remember that men walked on the moon? Will they have the energy to care, inbetween long treks for water and trying to eke out a subsistence living on a ruined earth? Perhaps the dominant mode will be anger, at the waste of multiple billions on a giant penis when millions of people starved.

Perhaps, though, the dominant mood will be melancholy. J. G. Ballard's Hello America and Myths of the Near Future depict a California and Florida of abandoned space centres, emptied pools, men and women spiritually hollowed out by the loss of technological purpose.