A few things happened this weekend: NASA flew the X-43A at over seven times the speed of sound or a shade over 5000mph. It’s significant not just because of the speed but it’s the first aircraft to use a ‘scramjet’ rather than a conventional turbine. Some posh blokes beat some other posh blokes in a boat race. As a spectator sport it’s probably as disappointing as watching someone mow a lawn. Hours of build up, people crowding the banks of the Thames, huge amounts of beer drunk, people who have never been to either Oxford or Cambridge waxing lyrical about the weight of one or others cox, and it’s all over in about 30 seconds as the boats race past like someone has surreptitiously added a Mercury 150 to the back. Some friends came round for dinner. Last night I watched Judge Dredd for the umpteenth time and wondered again what might have been. Never has a production team taken such well defined source material and dropped a bullock in quiet so spectacular a way. Did anyone involved in the movie actually read a copy of 2000AD? Well someone did because on occasion it teases you with images lifted straight from the original comic strip but then the script forgets what’s going on. And can some shoot Rob Schneider!