…one giant leap for white-van-mankind.

A space related event is planned for this month (April 2012), which will be as historic as the first moon landing in July 1969. It’ll be in the morning news, but if your cornflakes are too noisy, or the baby is crying, you’ll probably miss it all-together. It’s not by itself particularly newsworthy, but to those in the know, it will enter the history books as a momentous point in our protracted attempts to make use of that great nothingness...

The best things about this dish are: it’s easy to make; it costs almost nothing; it’s massively nutritious; it tastes delicious; and last but not least, you have to go out and harvest the main ingredient yourself. This last point is so because, as far as I know, you can’t just go out and buy a bag full of nettles from Tesco.

Nevertheless, a Tesco bag full of nettles are what you’ll need. Fortunately, as you know, nettles are...

Why is it that some really good technological ideas, such as ‘8 track’ (a tape you didn’t have to rewind) die an ignominious death, never to be heard of again, while really bad ideas seem to enjoy constant re-incarnation – despite their marked lack of success and their larger-than-life rubbish factor.

Ok, 8 track tapes were actually superseded by other media which also didn’t need rewinding and which possessed many other additional advantages. I’m...