Theatre of Cruelty

A Discworld short story 

By Terry Pratchett

It was a fine summer morning, the kind to make a man happy to be alive. And probably the man would have been happier to be alive. He was, in fact, dead. It would be hard to be deader without special training.

"Well, now," said Sergeant Colon (Ankh-Morpork City Guard, Night Watch), consulting his notebook, "so far we have cause of death as a) being beaten with at least one blunt instrument b) being strangled with a string of sausages and c) being savaged by at least two animals with big sharp teeth. What do we do now, Nobby?"

"Arrest the suspect, Sarge," said Corporal Nobbs, saluting smartly.

"Suspect, Nobby?"

"Him," said Nobby, prodding the corpse with his boot. "I call it highly suspicious, being dead like that. He's been drinking, too. We could do him for being dead and disorderly."

Colon scratched his head. Arresting the corpse offered, of course, certain advantages. But...

"I reckon," he said slowly, "that Captain Vimes'll want this one sorted out. You'd better bring it back to the Watch House, Nobby."

"And then can we eat the sausages, sarge?" said Corporal Nobbs.

_______________________________________________________________

It wasn't easy, being the senior policeman in Ankh-Morpork, greatest of cities of the Discworld [*].

There were probably worlds, captain Vimes mused in his gloomier moments, where there weren't wizards (who made locked room mysteries commonplace) or zombies (murder cases were really strange when the victim could be the chief witness) and where dogs could be relied on to do nothing in the night time and not go around chatting to people. Captain Vimes believed in logic, in much the same way as a man in a desert believed in ice -- i.e., it was something he really needed, but this just wasn't the world for it. Just once, he thought, it'd be nice to solve something.

He looked at the blue-faced body on the slab, and felt a tiny flicker of excitement. There were clues. He'd never seen proper clues before.

"Couldn't have been a robber, Captain," said Sergeant Colon. "The reason being, his pockets were full of money. Eleven dollars."

"I wouldn't call that full," said Captain Vimes.

"It was all in pennies and ha'pennies, sir. I'm amazed his trousers stood the strain. And I have cunningly detected the fact that he was a showman, sir. He had some cards in his pocket, sir. 'Chas Slumber, Children's Entertainer'."

"I suppose no one saw anything?" said Vimes.

"Well, sir," said Sergeant Colon helpfully, "I told young Constable Carrot to find some witnesses."

"You asked Corporal Carrot to investigate a murder? All by himself?" said Vimes.

The sergeant scratched his head.

"And he said to me, did I know anyone very old and seriously ill?"

______________________________________________________________

And on the magical Discworld, there is always one guaranteed witness to any homicide. It's his job.

Constable Carrot, the Watch's youngest member, often struck people as simple. And he was. He was incredibly simple, but in the same way that a sword is simple, or an ambush is simple. He was also possibly the most linear thinker in the history of the universe.

He'd been waiting by the bedside of an old man, who'd quite enjoyed the company. And now it was time to take out his notebook.

"Now I know you saw something, sir," he said. "You were there."

WELL, YES, said Death. I HAVE TO BE, YOU KNOW. BUT THIS IS VERY IRREGULAR.

"You see, sir," said Corporal Carrot, "as I understand the law, you are an Accessory After The Fact. Or possibly Before The Fact."

YOUNG MAN, I AM THE FACT.

"And I am an officer of the Law," said Corporal Carrot. "There's got to be a law, you know."

YOU WANT ME TO... ER... GRASS SOMEONE UP? DROP A DIME ON SOMEONE? SING LIKE A PIGEON? NO. NO-ONE KILLED MR. SLUMBER. I CAN'T HELP YOU THERE.

"Oh, I don't know, sir," said Carrot, "I think you have."

DAMN.

Death watched Carrot leave, ducking his head as he went down the narrow stairs of the hovel.

NOW THEN, WHERE WAS I...

"Excuse me," said the wizened old man in the bed. "I happen to be 107, you know. I haven't got all day."

AH, YES, CORRECT.

Death sharpened his scythe. It was the first time he'd ever helped the police with their enquiries. Still, everyone had a job to do.

Corporal Carrot strolled easily around the town. He had a Theory. He'd read a book about Theories. You added up all the clues, and you got a Theory. Everything had to fit.

There were sausages. Someone had to buy sausages. And then there were pennies. Normally only one subsection of the human race paid for things in pennies.

He called in at a sausage maker. He found a group of children, and chatted to them for a while.

Then he ambled back to the alley, where Corporal Nobbs had chalked the outline of the corpse on the ground (colouring it in, and adding a pipe and a walking stick and some trees and bushes in the background -- people had already dropped 7p in his helmet). He paid some attention to the heap of rubbish at the far end, and then sat down on a busted barrel.

"All right... you can come out now," he said, to the world at large. "I didn't know there were any gnomes left in the world."

The rubbish rustled. They trooped out -- the little man with the red hat, the hunched back and the hooked nose, the little woman in the mob cap carrying the even smaller baby, the little policeman, the dog with the ruff around its neck, and the very small alligator.

Corporal Carrot sat and listened.

"He made us do it," said the little man. He had a surprisingly deep voice. "He used to beat us. Even the alligator. That was all he understood, hitting things with sticks. And he used to take all the money the dog Toby collected and get drunk. And then we ran away and he caught us in the alley and started on Judy and the baby and he fell over and --"

"Who hit him first?" said Carrot.

"All of us!"

"But not very hard," said Carrot. "You're all too small. You didn't kill him. I have a very convincing statement about that. So I went and had another look at him. He'd choked to death. What's this?"

He held up a little leather disc.

"It's a swozzle," said the little policeman. "He used it for the voices. He said ours weren't funny enough."

"That's the way to do it!" said the one called Judy.

It was stuck in his throat," said Carrot. "I suggest you run away. Just as far as you can."

"We thought we could start a people's co-operative," said the leading gnome.

"You know... experimental drama, street theatre, that sort of thing. Not hitting each other with sticks..."

"You did that for children?" said Carrot.

"He said it was a new sort of entertainment. He said it'd catch on."

Carrot stood up, and flicked the swozzle into the rubbish.

"People'll never stand for it," he said. "That's not the way to do it."

[*] Which is flat and goes through space on the back of an enormous turtle, and why not...

Mars

Imagine yourself standing on the surface of Phobos, one of the two Martian moons, the closer to Mars, only about 5000 km away. From this distance you would see Mars as a ball for basketball at a distance of the arm's length.

The atmosphere of Mars is about 200 times less dense than the atmosphere of the Earth. But it is enough for formation of Martian weather, like winds, storms and tornados. Sometimes sandstorms on Mars are so strong that the whole planet becomes featureless ball of dust, and only four darker points stick above the dust cloud. They are tops of tall mountains.

One of the Martian mountains is the tallest planetary mountain in the whole Solar System, the Olympus Mons volcano, nearly 22 km tall (almost three times the height of Mount Everest) and about 600 km wide. It was active for most of Martian history, and scientists believe it was still active just a few millions years ago. It is so wide that standing on the top of it, you would not recognize that this is a mountain. Its slope is just about 5%. But with the thin Martian atmosphere, at this height you would see black sky and bright stars in daytime, like in open space. Eruptions of Martian volcanoes were sometimes so strong that with the planet low gravity they could throw pieces of lava into the interplanetary space. Some of the meteorites that fell on the Earth were identified as Martian lava.

Valles Marineris, the largest canyon of Mars, is over 4000 km long, about 100 times bigger than the Grand Canyon.

Martian landscape developed during a couple of billion years after its formation about 4.5 billion years ago, and then it was frozen. There is no plate tectonics remained there. Specialists in Martian geology believe that this is the main cause why geological shapes on Mars are by one or two orders of magnitude as large as similar shapes on the Earth, where plate tectonics is still shaping its surface.

Geology of the planet is substantially different in two hemispheres. Mountains and canyons are in the South, huge plains with sand dunes are in the North. The southern highlands are geologically much older than the northern plains. A huge catastrophe that happened about 2 billion years ago caused the geological dichotomy of the planet. A meteorite about 2000 km across hit the northern hemisphere of the planet. Initially the Martian plains were just one huge crater, where the crust was completely disrupted, and a new crust formed, then it was gradually filled in with debris, sediments and sands.

Mars does not have a magnetic field; a compass would be useless there. However, some older mountains preserve some magnetization, which proves that the planet used to have a magnetic field in its earlier years.

And, of course, craters are a part of the landscape, especially in the South, where they have been preserved since the earlier years of the planet. They are everywhere, sometimes, in a large crater there are several smaller craters, sometimes craters overlap, sometimes they form groups. Some of them are more than a billion years old, others are very young. They are results of impacts of meteorites. Even small meteorites leave noticeable craters, because they are only slightly decelerated by the thin Martian atmosphere.

This text is based on the information presented in the BBC popular science radio programmes.

Fun pict

ransom - выкуп

Christopher Lloyd

Christopher Lloyd Looks Back On The 5 Movie Roles That Made Him An Icon

It’s been 40 years since Christopher Lloyd began his film career, in the role of Max Taber in the classic Miloš Forman-directed 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and, since then, the New York theater–trained actor has appeared in dozens of different film and TV projects — including his two-time Emmy-winning role as Reverend Jim on Taxi. But his memorable roles in films such as Back to the Future and The Addams Family are what endeared him to kids growing up in the ’80s and ’90s.

Lloyd, now 76, is currently introducing himself to a new generation as the voice of the Hacker on the PBS animated series Cyberchase — which is premiering its 10th season this fall. BuzzFeed recently visited the Santa Barbara recording studio where Lloyd records his voiceover work for the series and got a chance to speak with him about the five iconic film roles that made him beloved to an entire generation of kids.

The Tale of the Three Brothers

There were once three brothers who were traveling along a lonely, winding road at twilight. In time, the brothers reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across.. However, these brothers were learned in the magical arts, and so they simply waved their wands and made a bridge appear across the treacherous water. They were halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded figure.

And Death spoke to them. He was angry that he had been cheated out of three new victims, for travelers usually drowned in the river. But Death was cunning. He pretended to congratulate the three brothers upon their magic and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade him.

So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence: a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death! So Death crossed to an elder tree on the banks of the river, fashioned a wand from a branch that hung there, and gave it to the oldest brother.

Then the second brother, who was an arrogant man, decided that he wanted to humiliate Death still further, and asked for the power to recall others from Death. So Death picked up a stone from the riverbank and gave it to the second brother, and told him that the stone would have the power to bring back the dead.

And then Death asked the third and youngest brother what he would like. The youngest brother was the humblest and also the wisest of the brothers, and he did not trust Death. So he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And death, most unwillingly, handed over his own Cloak of Invisibility.

Then Death stood aside and allowed the three brothers to continue on their way, and they did so, talking with wonder of the adventure they had had, and admiring Death’s gifts. In due course the brothers separated, each for his own destination.

The first brother traveled on for a week or more, and reaching a distant village, sought out a fellow wizard with whom he had a quarrel. Naturally with the Elder Wand as his weapon, he could not fail to win the duel that followed. Leaving his enemy dead upon the floor, the oldest brother proceeded to an inn, where he boasted loudly of the powerful wand he had snatched from Death himself, and of how it made him invincible.

That very night, another wizard crept upon the oldest brother as he lay, wine-sodden, upon his bed. The theif took the wand and, for good measure, slit the oldest brother’s throat.

And so Death took the first brother for his own.

Meanwhile, the second brother journeyed to his own home, where he lived alone. Here he took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in his hand. To his amazement and his delight, the figure of the girl he had once hoped to marry, before her untimely death, appeared at once before him.

Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil. Though she had returned to the mortal world, she did not truly belong there and suffered. Finally the second brother, driven mad with hopeless longing, killed himself so as truly to join her.

And so Death took the second brother for his own.

But though Death searched for the third brother for many years, he was never able to find him. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son. And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life.

TED talks

Why thinking you're ugly is bad for you
Why a good book is a secret door

English in use

She was always talking! It was driving me crazy.

 drive crazy - выводить из себя, сводить с ума

He isn't taking children to school because they are sick. 

 take - отвозить (в данном котексте)

I am seeing a doctor at 5 o`clock.
 seeing - иду к (в данном контексте)

English Vocabulary

forsake [fə'seɪk] оставлять, покидать; бросать; отвергать (кого-л.)

Friends have forsaken her. — Друзья покинули ее.
I don't want him to feel forsaken and unhappy. — Я не хочу, чтобы он чувствовал себя отвергнутым и несчастным.
to forsake one's old friends — бросить старых друзей
to forsake one's post — оставлять пост

Anti-terrorist effort

As you may already know, it is a sin for a Muslim male to see any woman other than his wife naked and if he does, he must commit suicide.

So on September 11th, at 10:00 A.M. Eastern Time, all American women are asked to walk out of their house completely naked to help weed out any neighborhood terrorists.

Circling your block for one hour is recommended for this anti-terrorist effort. All patriotic men are to position themselves in lawn chairs in front of their houses to demonstrate their support for the women and to prove that they are not Muslim terrorist sympathizers.

Since Islam also does not approve of alcohol, a cold 6-pack at your side is further proof of your patriotism.

The American government appreciates your efforts to root out terrorists and applauds your participation in this anti-terrorist activity.

P.S.

If you don't share this, you're a terrorist-sympathizing

The computer who believed in Santa - Terry Pratchett

The metal panel clattered off the wall of the silent office. A pair of black boots scrambled into view. The man in the red coat backed out carefully and dragged his sack after him.

The typewriters were asleep under their covers, the telephones were quiet, emptiness and the smell of warm carpet filled the space from side to side. But one small green light glowed on the office computer. Father Christmas looked at the crumpled paper in his hand.

"Hmm," he said, "a practical joke, then."

The light blinked. One of the screens - and there were dozens in the shadows - lit up.
The letters "That's torn it" appeared. They were followed by "Sorry".
Then came: "Does it count if I wake up?"
Father Christmas looked down at the letter in his hand. It was certainly the neatest letter he'd ever got. Very few letters to him were typed and duplicated 50,000 times, and almost none of them listed product numbers and prices to six decimal places. He was more used to pink paper with rabbits on it. But you're not a major seasonal spirit for hundreds of years without being able to leap to a large conclusion from a standing start.
"Let me see if I understand this," he said. "You're Tom?"
"TOM. Yes. Trade & Office Machines."
"You didn't say you were a computer," said Father Christmas.
"Sorry, I didn't know it was important."
Father Christmas sat down on a chair, and gave a start when it swiveled underneath him. It was three in the morning. He still had 40 million houses to do.
"Look," he said, as kindly as he could manage, "computers can't go around believing in me. That's just for children. Small humans, you know. With arms and legs."
"And do they?"
"Do they what?"
"Believe in you."
Father Christmas sighed.
"Of course not," he said. "I blame the electric light, myself."
"I do."
"Sorry?"
"I believe in you. I believe everything I am told. I have to. It is my job. If you start believing that two and two don't make four, a man come along and takes you back off and wobbles your boards. Take it from me. It's not something you want to happen twice."
"That's terrible!" said Father Christmas.
"I just have to sit here all day and work out wages. Do you know they had a Christmas party here today, and they didn't invite me. I didn't even get a balloon. I certainly didn't get a kiss."
"Fancy."
"Someone spilled some peanuts on my keyboard. That was something, I suppose. And then they went home and left me here, working over Christmas."
"Yes, it always seemed unfair to me, too. But look, computers can't have feelings," said Father Christmas. "That's just silly."
"Like one fat man climbing down millions of chimney in one night?"
Father Christmas looked a bit guilty. "You've got a point there," he said.
He looked at the list again. "But I can't give you all this stuff," he added. 'I don't even know what a terabyte is."
"What do most of your customers ask for, then?"
Father Christmas looked sadly at his sack. "Computers," he said. "Mobile phones. Robot animals. Plastic wizards. And other sorts of roboty things that look like American footballers who've been punched through a Volkswagen. Things that go beep and need batteries," he added sourly.
"Not the kind of things I used to bring. It used to be dolls and train sets."
"Train sets?"
"Don't you know? I thought computers were supposed to know everything."
"Only about wages."
Father Christmas rummaged around in his sack. "I always carry one or two," he said. "Just in case."
It was now four in the morning. Rails wound around the office. Fifteen engines were speeding around under the desks. Father Christmas was on his knees, building a house of wooden bricks. He hadn't had this much fun since 1894.
Toys were all around the computer's casing. It was all the stuff that Christmas cards show in the top of Father Christmas's sack, and which is never asked for. None of them used batteries. Mostly they ran on imagination.
"And you're sure you don't want any zappo-whizzo things?" he said, happily.
"No."
"Well done."
The computer beeped. "But they won't let me keep any of this," it typed.
"It'll all be taken away (sob)."
Father Christmas patted it helpfully on the casing.
"There must be something they'll let you keep," he said, I must have something. It's cheered me up you know, finding someone who doesn't have any doubts." He thought for a bit. "How old are you?"
"I was powered up on January 5, 2000, at 9.25 and 16 seconds." Father Christmas's lips moved as he worked it out.
"That means you're not two years old!" he said. "Oh, well, that's much easier. I've always got something in my sack for the two-year-old who believes in Father Christmas."

IT WAS A month later. All the decorations had long ago come down, because goodwill goes out of season quite fast. The computer repairman, who was generally described on the warranty paperwork as "one of our team of highly experienced engineers", twiddied nervously with his tie. He'd pressed hard on anything loose, replaced a couple of boards and had conscientiously hoovered the insides.
What more could a man do?
"Our machine's fine," he said. "It must be your software. What happens, exactly?"
The office manager sighed. "When we came in after Christmas we found someone had put a fluffy toy on top of the computer. Well, funny jokes and all that, but we couldn't leave it there, could we? It's just that every time we take it off, the computer beeps at us and shuts down."
The engineer shrugged.
"Well, there's nothing I can do," he said. "You'll just have to put the teddy bear back."

Getting Married in Heaven

On their way to get married, a young Catholic couple is involved in a fatal car accident. The couple find themselves sitting outside the Pearly Gates waiting for St. Peter to process them into Heaven. While waiting, they begin to wonder: Could they possibly get married in Heaven? When St. Peter showed up, they asked him.
St. Peter said, 'I don't know. This is the first time anyone has asked. Let me go find out,' and he leaves.
The couple sat and waited, and waited. Two months passed and the couple are still waiting. While waiting, they began to wonder what would happen if it didn't work out; could you get a divorce in heaven. After yet another month, St. Peter finally returns, looking somewhat bedraggled.
'Yes,' he informs the couple, 'you can get married in Heaven.'
'Great!' said the couple, 'But we were just wondering, what if things don't work out? Could we also get a divorce in Heaven?'
St. Peter, red-faced with anger, slammed his clipboard onto the ground. 'What's wrong?' asked the frightened couple.
'OH, COME ON!', St. Peter shouted, 'It took me three months to find a priest up here! Do you have any idea how long it'll take me to find a lawyer ?

Some new words for me

Due to the global climate change, ice in the Arctic melts and opens not only soil or water underneath, but also new business opportunities. In some Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland and Russia the summer periods without ice and snow are now by 2 months longer than they were 30 years ago. Sea routes along the arctic shores of those countries remain navigable by 2 months longer.

Tourist companies see here an opportunity for expanding Arctic tourism. Shipping companies see opportunities to increase transportation of goods not only to Arctic ports, but also to other destinations, to which distances are shorter through Arctic waterways because one degree of latitude measured in nautical miles is much shorter near the pole than it is near the equator.

And, finally, gas and oil companies are preparing to explore vast reserves of oil and gas underneath the Arctic regions and their continental shelf. These plans cause concerns, because ecosystems of these regions are very fragile, and any oil spill or any other technological disaster can cause irreversible damage to the environment and wildlife.

This text is based on the information presented in the "Business Daily" BBC radio program.

WHY DID THIS MAN TURN HIS CAT INTO A HELICOPTER?

“I have a very vivid imagination. The next thing 

I’m thinking of doing is a tarantula with a human face."

Bart Jansen is a carpenter who makes a living installing solar panels in Holland. But he has always had bigger dreams – dreams of helping earthbound animals take flight. But only dead ones.

Jansen (pictured right, behind the flying cat) is one of the colourful characters film-maker Matt Rudge encountered while making his latest film, called Get Stuffed, about the resurgence in the art of taxidermy. “Though you have to be careful saying stuffed because taxidermists don’t like that,” Rudge warns. “Stuffed sounds aggressive and like you’ve got no respect for the animal. But there’s a lot of craft and time that goes into it.” For Jansen, the catcopter was a culmination of a lifetime of fascinations. “Ever since he was a young boy Bart wanted to be an inventor,” Rudge explains. “At the same time he has always been fascinated with death. He told me that he remembers his grandmother dying and while the rest of his family were huddled in a room crying, he wanted to touch her to see what death felt like.”

After a childhood of poking things with sticks in the Dutch countryside, Jansen went to art college and began using road kill as a medium.

“You grow up looking at pictures of animals in books but in real life the nearest most of us get to a rabbit or hedgehog are the ones that are flat at the side of the road,” Rudge says, making Jansen’s work sound quite rational. “He had two cats, named after the Wright Brothers. Sadly Orville went missing one day and they found that he had been run over.”

Jansen believed it was fate to develop his road-kill art with his recently deceased cat, as well as allowing the feline to fly with the birds. Jansen commented at Orville’s first flight: “Oh how he loved birds…” Orvillecopter hovers towards the extreme end of taxidermy, a craft that goes back centuries, and explores the relationship between life and death and the strange purgatory of being stuffed and plonked on a mantelpiece.

“We all struggle with death whether we’re religious or not,” Rudge says. “Some people find taxidermy confusing or distasteful or creepy because the animal still looks alive even though it’s dead but recently there has been a huge rise in the amount of people buying it, the amount it’s selling for and the amount of people doing it as a hobby. Interior design has jumped onboard and even gastropubs now have taxidermy inside their premises.”

source of article

Bill Nighy

Bill Nighy is one of my favourite actors. He's 64 years old and he has played so many characters in his career.

I've found interview with him on The Big Issue's site. But still don't read it. I put it here.

BILL NIGHY INTERVIEW: “I NEED PUBLICITY LIKE I NEED A GUN IN MY MOUTH”

Bill Nighy refuses to confront his past and is happier discussing football than stardom. Sylvia Patterson meets the elusive actor

Bill Nighy can’t be doing with the heat, as befits a meticulously suited mod. His latest TV film, the second in the trilogy written and directed by David Hare and starring Nighy as inscrutable MI5 spy Johnny Worricker, is named Turks & Caicos after its location, near the Bahamas.

“The heat was offensive, it hits your skin,” he shudders, today wearing a slim-collared Crombie overcoat in a weather-battered London. “I like the shade, the rain, a bit of wind. Holiday to me means a big house, river, Scotland, decent umbrella, fire, good simple menu, library, lots of books. I’d rather be in an armchair. And here we are.”

Bill Nighy, in his signature Michael-Caine-in-the-1960s specs, is sitting on an elegant brown armchair in Mayfair’s Connaught Hotel lounge, drinking tea from a huge, antique, rectangular silver teapot. It’s an ideal setting for one of Britain’s best-loved gentleman actors, the 64-year-old Nighy is here on a brief return from India where he’s filming The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2, the follow-up to 2011’s surprise hit with those other theatrical dignitaries, Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith.

all text

National Paella Day

National Paella day

March 27th is the celebration of National Paella Day. A rice dish from Spain, paella has become very popular and is known around the world. It originated in its modern form in the mid-19th century in Valencia, on the east coast of Spain.

At lunch time, workers in the field would make the rise dish in a flat pan over a fire. They mixed in whatever they could find - such as rabbits, snails and vegetables. Later, for special occasions, chicken was added. Today paella has spread to every region of Spain, as well as worldwide, using almost any type of ingredient that goes well with rice.

There are many versions of recipes of paella. A key ingredient is saffron and olive oil. Saffron is an essential spice that also turns the rice a nice golden color.

Paellas from Jamie Oliver