For Mike.

The BBC has decided that it needs to explain to its readers/listeners exactly why fog shuts down airports.

No, really.

I swear.

Dense fog has brought misery to thousands of travellers after causing major disruption to flights in the run-up to Christmas.

But why do such weather conditions result in chaos at airports such as Heathrow?

Flying an airliner is widely seen as a hi-tech affair, involving aircraft that are bristling with navigational and safety devices to assist the pilots.

So how can weather conditions such as the fog that has descended over much of the country over the past few days bring so much chaos to airports?

The root of the answer, says David Learmount of Flight International magazine, is that pilots still rely a surprising amount on a very simple piece of technology - their eyes.

Wow. Whatever would Britons do without the BBC to tell them that pilots need their eyes to fly planes? And that fog, what with its tendency to make things difficult to see, would affect the ability of pilots to fly planes?

Good for you, BBC! Way to infantilize your subjects. I mean, audience.

This one should be it.

Via Ilyka, and it just goes to show you: Not only do we never get too old for bathroom jokes, but the human race is a strange and mystifying animal, and sometimes freakishly scary.

Oh, yeah. Spit-monitor warning.

The AP article actually calls kassams “crude projectiles” in this story, even after identifying the wounds as such:

The rocket blew through the living room and exploded in a bedroom where three children were sleeping, relatives said.

Two-year-old Samir al-Masri’s legs were two broken, said Dr. Said Judeh of Kamal Adwan hospital. The boy’s 4-year-old sister and 3-year-old brother were lightly wounded by shrapnel, said their uncle, Jad al-Masri.

The rocket broke both legs of a two-year-old child. Shards of metal entered his siblings’ bodies, cutting the flesh. And how does the AP describe this killing machine?

In Beit Hanoun, Palestinian militants fired two rockets toward Israel from the northern Gaza town. One of the crude projectiles misfired and struck a nearby house, a Palestinian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

A “crude projectile.” You know what a crude projectile is? My brothers making a mortar out of a metal pipe, M-80s, and tennis balls. We shot those suckers into the next street, not stopping to think they might have hurt someone coming down. Those are “crude projectiles.” Rocks are “crude projectiles.” These?

These are rockets.

And the palestinians are back to launching them every single day. In spite of the so-called “truce.”

Ceasefire violations continue: Another three Qassam rockets were fired at Israel Thursday morning, following seven rockets launched Wednesday.

Two of the rockets fired Thursday landed in Palestinian territory, and one landed in Israel.

Wednesday saw a record number of Qassam rockets launched in one day during the ceasefire which was declared last month. In total, seven rockets were fired on Wednesday and during the night, landing in the western Negev.

At least 40 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip since the truce came into force.

Some truce.

Update: The source is Xinhua, but this story says the children’s mother miscarried due to the rocket attack. Another dead child at the hands of the terrorists (and this one will be tallied in the “killed by Israel” column, as usual).

The so-called “cease-fire,” during which palestinians felt themselves perfectly able to launch kassam rockets at Israel (back into the double-digits per day), has taken another “accidental” hit on palestinians in Beit Hanoun.

You remember Beit Hanoun. It’s the town where the AP says that Israel SAYS palestinians are launching rockets from. Because it’s not like anyone has ever witnessed any attacks from there (*cough* UN HRC representative *cough*).

Three Palestinian were lightly injured Thursday morning after a rocket hit their home in the northern Gaza Strip, medical sources told the Palestinian news agency Maan

Eyewitnesses said that the rocket accidentally hit the home of the al-Masri family in Beit Hanoun, injuring the pregnant mother, who suffered a miscarriage, and her two children.

By the way, see if you can see a difference between the rockets wounding palestinians, and the rockets wounding Israelis, in this AP report:

Errant Palestinian Rocket Hurts Gaza Tot
A Palestinian rocket aimed at Israel veered off course and struck a home in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, moderately wounding a 2-year-old boy sleeping in his bedroom, hospital officials and residents said.

The rocket fire further strained a cease-fire reached between Israel and Palestinian militants late last month. Israeli officials say Palestinian militants have fired more than 40 rockets since the Nov. 26 truce, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned this week that his patience is wearing thin.

Renewed battles with Israel would mean more instability in Gaza, which has been racked by factional fighting between the rival Hamas and Fatah movements for more than a week. Gaza remained calm Thursday on the second day of a renewed truce between the Palestinian rivals.

In Beit Hanoun, Palestinian militants fired two rockets toward Israel from the northern Gaza town. One of the crude projectiles misfired and struck a nearby house, a Palestinian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The rocket blew through the living room and exploded in a bedroom where three children were sleeping, relatives said.

In the next grafs, the family is named and aged. Israeli victims, you may remember, almost never are identified in AP reports.

More on this later.

The discredited British historian and Holocaust denier David Irving was expected to fly back to Britain today after Austria’s supreme court unexpectedly agreed to release him from prison early. The court in Vienna ruled that Irving, who has spent more than 13 months in jail, could serve the rest of his three-year sentence on probation. The ruling did not quash his conviction for Holocaust denial but means he is free to leave Austria.
…

After yesterday’s verdict, Irving thanked the judge in German, addressing him as “your honour”. He then turned to a female supporter in the public gallery, telling her in English: “Now I want a kiss.”

Amazing: first Austrians jail this creep for something he believes in and preaches incessantly. Then they suddenly have a change of mind and release him, when his beliefs have not changed a single bit. A questionable move followed by an even more questionable move. I wonder - could it be that the reason for his speedy release hides somewhere in this:

Soon after Irving’s arrest, Austria’s prison authorities faced acute embarrassment when it emerged he had discovered two of his own books, Hitler’s War and Battle in the Arctic Sea, in the library of the prison where he was being held.

I also wonder about this judge:

Explaining his decision, Judge Ernest Maurer said Irving’s crimes had happened “an extremely long time back”. He also said the British author had undergone an “impeccable conversion”- recent statements say he now accepts the Holocaust. There was no danger that Irving would re-offend, the judge added.

Something is definitely lost in translation here. That conversion: is it some new secret religion they practice in Austria nowadays? Because otherwise it is difficult to understand what kind of a conversion it was. It will suffice to check the following that raises a few questions about the “conversion” that sorry piece of shit has undergone:

Speaking briefly afterwards, Irving, who has used his months in jail to write his memoirs, described himself as “fit and well”. He said he would be calling for an academic boycott of German and Austrian historians until their governments stopped putting historians in prison.

And, by the way: that boycott call - does it ring any bells?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews