"You Were Only Supposed to Blow the Bloody Doors Off!"

Have you seen The Italian Job? The original, starring Michael Caine, not the remake. Personally, I didn't think too highly of it when I caught it a few years back, but it is notable for its ending -- it ends on a cliffhanger. Literally.

The crew that pulled off the heist finds themselves trapped inside a bus that is hanging halfway off the edge of a cliff. All the gold they got away with is in the back of the bus, hanging over the abyss; they're all in the front of the bus, and if anyone tries to get to the money or get off the bus, the weight shift will send the lot of them plummeting to their deaths. Roll credits; end of film.

Now the film has inspired more than a remake, it's inspired the Royal Society of Chemistry to hypothesize solutions to the dilemma.

So here again is another case (like "most annoying invention") where some British folks have devoted an incredible amount of scientific effort into something even more incredibly mundane. I understand that "solve movie cliffhanger" scientists are probably not from the same group as the "cure cancer" scientists, but there must be some worthier pursuit they could have worked on, right?

Secondly, I'm shocked that the Washington Post article I linked to managed to get two whole pages out of this story.

Thirdly, and most insanely, the contest winner gave a quote about "great actors -- Michael Caine, Noel Coward, Benny Hill." Any sentence about great actors that includes Michael Caine and Benny Hill and isn't "there are great actors like Michael Caine, and then there's Benny Hill" is shameful. I don't care what science the guy knows, I don't think I'd believe him if he told me water was wet.