Sci-fi fans will likely have heard of the prestigious Hugo Awards. On Saturday night, top notch Who writer and all-round good chap Steven Moffat won this year’s Hugo for “Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)” for his two-part Doctor Who story “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances”. Congratulations to Steve, and to fellow nominees Rob Shearman and Paul Cornell, also good chaps, who were both nominated in the same category for their excellent Eccleston episodes. Paul is writing for the next series so he may be wowing the Hugo voters again quite soon.

Meanwhile, the Emmy Awards have been dished out. Kelly Macdonald won one for her role in the dreadful drama The Girl in the Cafe and Tony Shalhoub picked up another award for his starring role in the marvellous Monk (albeit as best comedy actor for something which really isn’t a comedy). I was particularly pleased to see Alan Alda win “Best Supporting Actor” for his role as Arnold Vinick in The West Wing (at least he won something), which, the Beeb tells me, makes The West Wing the joint biggest Emmy winner ever with Hill Street Blues.

Coming up this week on No Geek Is An Island…

More Edinburgh Fringe reviews (most of the shows have already finished, so no rush)… The West Wing season 4… I might finally get around to joining in with the 25 Lines meme… I also fancy doing the Favourite TV Characters meme… And finally, a detailed tract on how liberal principles and the writings of Jeremy Bentham* and John Stuart Mill can be applied to save the health service, defeat anti-social behaviour and solve the conflict in the Middle East once and for all.

That’s more of an aide memoire for me than a trailer. Usually when I make lists like this, some of the posts never materialise. (I’m putting my money on the last one.)

*not him

It’s the Dewey Decimal Classification number for Pluto, sitting happily in the “Planets of the Solar System” schedule. So there are more implications of Pluto being demoted to dwarf planet. The folks are Dewey Towers have noticed:

We’re still looking at what this means for 523.4 Planets of solar system and for 523.48 Trans-Uranian planets in Dewey. In particular, we will need to decide exactly where Charon and other KBOs (“Plutonian objects”) go in the classification, and whether “Trans-Uranian planets” is still the best caption.

Of course, Trans-Uranic Heavy Planets may not be used where there is life.

We’ve finally been told why – or, rather, been given a reason why – hand luggage restrictions are in place. This comes not from a minister but from an unnamed source at the Department for Transport, via the BBC:

[It is] far easier to detect possibly dangerous items in the type of smaller bag now being allowed to be carried on to aircraft by passengers than larger ones.

Officials showed reporters X-ray pictures of items in a large bag and items in a smaller one.

In the current enhanced security regime, the larger bag, which contained difficult-to-see hand cream, aftershave and shower gel, would have had to be rejected and a time-consuming hand search would have had to be conducted.

The good news is that:

a source has told the BBC the government hopes to increase the size of allowed hand luggage within weeks.

I’m flying in three weeks. Fingers crossed.

Of course, now that I’m protected from liquid bombs and have got over the effect of seeing Snakes on a Plane, I read that my plane could fall apart. C’est la vie.

At the time of the sudden airport security crackdown when all hand luggage was banned, I quipped to friends that we were being prevented from taking on board books deemed dangerous: Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, that sort of thing. It was satire of the highest order, of course, but with no truth in it.

Until now.

“Is that about terrorism?”, asked the lady that examined my onboard luggage. “Humm, well, it contains mentions of that, but it’s about your former ambassador to Uzbekistan and more about diplomacy”, I replied politely. “Does it have al-Qaida in it?” I looked a bit confused. “What?” – “Well, I have to check this with my manager, the rest of your stuff is fine, though.”

Now you can’t blame the Government for the actions of overly-officious airport security, overworked to the point of thinking that reading the word “terrorism” could prompt a passenger to explode mid-flight; you can, however, blame them for creating the climate of paranoia that foments this. (Via.)

While on our walk on Sunday, Nick recommended that I read Nineteen Eighty-Four. I really should have done that a long time ago but I have various Orwell issues dating from school (Animal Farm was a set text) that have got in the way. Now more than ever it seems worth a go, so I’ve put those aside and started reading…