"Without firing a shot..."

This footage underscores pretty well just how foolish John Reid was when he described the prospect of Britain's deployment in Helmand. That we could come out of that place without a battle is not just unlikely, believing such an obvious fairy tale demonstrates a wilful ignorance. Not believing it, but asserting it anyway, demonstrates a much more serious problem.

The footage comes from At War, an upcoming documentary about the war in Afghanistan. Proper coverage of the fight for Afghanistan's future is slowly trickling out now, but it is long overdue.

Champion Script

I've become rather taken with The Ministry of Type of late and it has introduced me to an incredibly impressive font called Champion Script Pro. Now, I know next to nothing about fonts, but I do know that having 4280 glyphs in each weight, covering Latin, Greek and Cyrillic, this one is exceptionally elaborate. Over at their blog you can also read a making of which makes pretty fascinating reading. P.S. I nicked these cool examples of the font from the Ministry of Type too, so double hat tip.

Battlestar Recap

Before Season 4 starts on April 4th it's time for a quick - and quite witty - recap on the Galactica's journey to Earth so far.

Best line: "But then Helo tells Starbuck there's a bun in the toaster..." (h/t Slate).

Kanye Hands

Impressive handiwork. Chortle. (h/t Kanye West.)

Joe Building

Jonathan Meades has just finished his latest series, Magnetic North; once again, relegated to digital, this will not have reached anywhere near the audience it deserves (even on the excellent BBC Four). The programme asked why we are so drawn to the South and toured the cities of the Hanseatic League in order to find a definitive North, but it was in Meades' handling of the dual Totalitarianisms of Nazism and Stalinism that the documentary excelled. Meades is blunt about the similarities between the two and his contempt for 'Ostalgia' and similar romanticisation of the abhorrent Soviet regime. He has tackled Stalin - and his unique aesthetic sensibilities - before, and you can watch that programme, Joe Building, below:

Drudge Report decides to break OPSEC

In case you've missed it, the Drudge Report is boasting about its scoop on Prince Harry's tour in Afghanistan and the rest of the media have now broken their silence and are reporting the story. The Drudge Report's headline ends with "3 MONTH TOUR", and of course, such is the self-fulfilling nature of this headline, it will now only be a three month tour. It is more than likely that Prince Harry will soon have to leave Helmand, where he has been operating as a JTAC since December 14, as the man known as 'the bullet magnet' is forced to fulfil that nickname. Jon Snow thinks this is marvellous and tries to draw a link between this and the recent loss of trust in the media, asking "whether viewers, readers and listeners will ever want to trust media bosses again."

However, this isn't a matter of faked footage or contrived competitions; this is a British Army officer who, through no fault of his own is of particular interest to our enemies and whose life - and the lives of those around him - is now placed at greater risk because of one desperate blogger. A great many people knew he was there; it takes a very special kind of egomania to release that information for one's own benefit.

Update: Channel 4 News' desperate hunt for a negative spin to put on Cornet Wales's deployment knows no end; now they think British Muslims might be offended by Harry's description of his mission there as "killing the bad guys." For British Muslims, as fellow members of the Ummah, must surely feel some affinity for the mass-murdering, medievalist and misogynist fanatics that make up the Taliban's ranks?

The Channel 4 News website reads like the ramblings of a series of competing personalities manifested in a muddled stream of consciousness; it describes its competing - but equally odious - opinions as "voices" and one of these voices is not so sure that Harry's words don't apply to all "Muslim fighters". Quite who Channel 4 News means by "Muslim fighters" is another, more pertinent, question that they fail to address.

Books

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

- Arnold Lobel

Redbelt

The trailer for Redbelt is out; as with any Mamet project, I'm outrageously excited about this film, but with a cast this good, I think I'm justified in that.

Jerry O'Connell on Jerry O'Connell, actor

This is quite funny. And gave me the idea of a Sliders episode where Jerry O'Connell is the world's most famous actor and Tom Cruise is only famous for a '90s sci-fi series.

Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)

This video raises the inevitable question of which Simpson sister is the more artificial; the song, however, is strangely compelling, while the video displays a commendable Surrealist influence.