cool 50s sci fi covers by Powers

Yay - very Yves Tanguy

cool 50s sci fi covers by Powers

Councils warned over spying laws

There's something to be said here about how laws are thoughtlessly rushed through willy-nilly during a crisis and once they're there on the statute books - it's inevitable that they're just going to be abused.



BBC NEWS | UK | Councils warned over spying laws

Soooo...

...there was terrible mad dictator - who terrorised his own population and any opposition was dealt with brutally. Democracy was just a farce. Mmmm - and the last time that happened the US of A stepped in to sort things out. They made and continue to make a complete mess of things mind you - but you know, they said they were doing it to liberate the people and bring about peace and freedom. They got rid of the evil dictator at least. Yet while broadly comparable things are happening in Zimbabwe. We're not hearing a dicky-bird from Mr Bush. Funny that.

'Turn Left'

...spoiler alert...

Just a quick observation - in interviews - even on the official podcast commentary - people have been referring to this as Doctor Who does 'Sliding Doors' but no one's mentioned there's a few bits of 'Donnie Darko'-ness in this episode. Consider: both concern a new universe that's budded off because of some anomaly brought about by time travel. Both have their other worldly messengers in Darko the creepy Bunny calls out Donnie from his bedroom and saves him from the falling airplane engine, in 'Turn Left' Rose tells Donna to take the raffle so she wins the out of town holiday that saves her family from being amongst the nuked in London. In both stories the budded universe ends with the hero (who is otherwise a completely unremarkable and ordinary person) sacrificing themselves. Which by the way, is also how 'Father's day' ended too. I've mentioned before that this has been a recurring theme throughout the Nu Who. Sooooo.... does I wonder who does the deed in this upcoming finale? It's toss up between Donna and Rose isn't it.

Not enough Donna

Is it me or has this current series just sped by? I confess that I've been living weekend to weekend these past months. And for me the whole Doctor - Donna combo has been utterly magical. So many great little exchanges: "ooh too salty!" "oh, it doesn't *do* wood?" that have me Coxhilling. I've adored seeing the Doctor being taken down a peg or two -especially after three whole seasons of all that Doe-eyed admiration from his previous two companions. (Martha cast as 'John the Baptist' was a particular sore point for me last year. But then I just couldn't understand her character. Well, other than that RTD is really big on stories that revolve around unrequited love (that was the big story behind 'Queer as folk' after all) - and might go someway to explaining the theme of self-sacrifice that recurs so often throughout all the stories for Doctor Who he's ever written. [One day I'll get around to watching 'Bob and Rose' - maybe that's a story about requited love against the odds? I won't know until I watch it. That I haven't is mostly testimony to the fact I could never ever see Alan Davies as a gay man. Sorry -but imho the whole series suffered from that one single piece of mis-casting. Not to discredit Alan - who was nothing less than exceptional in 'Jonathan Creek' But Alan as a homo - no way.]

-and tomorrow is the big Donna story episode - even if she has to share the spotlight with that Rose.

(Who's guessing Donna will be simultaneously both 'deux ex machina' AND a reset button. This is an episode written by RTD after all. Mmmmm - just smell those recurring memes. Yum yum.)

But I want more Donna - she's been the best ever companion (so far) to draw out background details from the Doctor's history. I'm already annoyed that the plans have always been that she was only to ever have the one season. With the hints already laid out that at best she's going to end up back at home with a wiped memory - when I want to see her character constantly develops up to the point where she ends up bouncing around the universe with her very own psychic paper and sonic screwdriver having all her own adventures. Her going back to a life of temping just doesn't seem right somehow. Actually it seems very very wrong.

the interconnectiveness of everything... (via Doctor Who) 2

The last episode of Nebulous - Phlegm and Us - guest starred a certain David Tennant playing a Doctor... Doctor Beep - a clown Doctor. Professor Nebulous describes himself as having a brain of fire and ice - 'your brain is like tepid water?' and proclaiming that on this planet he's known as the 'oncoming drizzle'.

(listen again - only valid for the next 7 days)

Iris Robinson - thinks the gays are an abomination

You already know how set against the 42 days without trial thing I was - so imagine my additional dismay at reading this:

from the Pop bitch newsletter:

>> Straight up <<
Bible-basher aids Gordon Brown

Last week House of Commons passed the bill to
allow the Government to detain people without
charge for 42 days, with the help of the
Democratic Unionist Party. One of those MPs
voting with the government was Iris Robinson.
She thinks homosexuality “is an abomination”,
and employs someone to help gays turn straight.
Nice friend for Labour to have. Listen to
the lovely lady here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/realmedia/nolan/radio/178.ram

Pink News articles: one, two.

I knew the Labour Party had swung to the right over the past few years - but this takes the biscuit.

oh hello,

The two main founders of flickr are now leaving.

Wonder how long it'll be before others of the original team start following?

Flickr Founders Flee Yahoo | Epicenter from Wired.com

Panorama: Daylight Robbery

Well, that was one of the most appalling and shocking things I've seen in a while.

We got to see just why Bush and his chums were so desperate to invade Iraq now.

BBC - Press Office - Panorama: Daylight Robbery

the interconnectiveness of everything... (via Doctor Who)

Tom Goodman-Hill plays a copper Phil Collins in 'Ideal' - Moz's next door neighbour Judith (played by Jo Neary) has a storyline where she ends up wearing a wasp mask permanently super-glued to her face. Curiously Tom Goodman-Hill played the Vicar Reverend Golightly in the Doctor Who episode 'The Wasp and the Unicorn' - where it turns out he is also a 'Vespiform' - an alien giant wasp. Meanwhile Moz's other rather sinister neighbour 'Fist' turns out to be a vicar...

I could also mention the writer of Ideal also wrote a Doctor Who audio play - - for Big Finish. 'The Faith Stealers'

Review: Polaroid PoGo Printer Spits Pics on the Quick

mmmmm - mini printers. maybe print out web pages and whatever - mmmmm. nice.

Review: Polaroid PoGo Printer Spits Pics on the Quick | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

Russell T Davies - OBE

Back when 'Queer As Folk' was on air - I bet no one - especially not the moral-majority people who were up in arms about it - would have ever foreseen Russell T. getting a gong like this!

And Paul O'Grady, Victoria Wood, Dot Cotton all getting awards too.

The world sure has changed.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Profile: Russell T Davies

Midnight

Verdict:
The weakest episode of the Season – just when I thought we were going to escape having one this year. But at least it wasn't as bad as '42' or even (*shudders*) 'Fear Her'.

Not that it wasn't without it's interesting points: IE the main one being that RTD broke one of his own cardinal story rules. Ever since he brought the Doctor back there's been the consistent theme throughout that whosoever the Doctor meets – he acts as an example for them to better themselves. Well, nearly always – unless they're the baddies of course, or just plain dodgy. For example – the way Adam fell victim to his own selfishness and got left with a hole in his head. In Midnight - no one was improved or even saved by the Doctor. He effectively lost this one.

The second interesting point was that the Doctor couldn't talk himself out of trouble this time. His main weapon of choice - his gob - got turned against him.

___ ____ ____ ____

This season's list of self-sacrifices so far:

(I'm thinking – mmmmm – I hope the next batch of writers will be able to think up some new ideas – because this one has really been done to death - (hur-hur-hur) now.)

The Poison Sky.
Rattigan – half petulant revenge on those double-crossing Sontarans – half doing the right thing after meeting the Doctor.

The Doctor's Daughter
Hath Peck saving Martha by drowning.
Jenny taking the bullet for Daddy.

Forest of the Dead.
River Song – even if a digital copy of her consciousness lives on in the library's Matrix along with her mates.

[It's no wonder he's going to end up meeting up with her in the future – and getting all intimate (possibly even married) since she's already fulfilled the main thing he likes in anyone. The willingness to self-sacrifice to save other lives. It's like a fetish with him. Maybe this explains why we've never seen him in a proper relationship before...]

Midnight.
The Hostess.

... and from the very drama-filled trailer for 'Turn Left' the implication is that Donna is up to some big time self-sacrificing (I bloody hope not – because I'll be devastated if she does) but it looks like she's playing this season's 'deus ex machina'/reset button a couple of episodes early. (and that's something else I hope the new writers find new ideas to replace when the show comes back the year after next.)

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol - Times Online

Gay-liens

(I've been meaning to do this for ages)

the Thals



the Axons



the Movellans

Leaked Pic

Leaked Pic
Originally uploaded by Cameron K McEwan

You know - there are STILL going to be a few fans out there who are going to say this is Adam from the first season's episodes 'Dalek' and 'the Long Game'.

Sigh

One of the more annoying things about fandom is the forums (and comments on other people's blogs) ... because you soon get see how unbelievably thick a lot of people are.

So there's been this one theory that's been hanging around since series one from the Dalek and the Long Game episodes – back when one blogger (I wish I could remember which one now) had first picked up on the Bad Wolf references... and his comments boxes became the home for wild speculations as to what it could all mean. This was were I first came across the 'OMG! Adam is Davros' theory'. This was when it had leaked that the 'Big Bad' was going to be Daleks but no one could guess how they were going to return – having seen what was supposedly the last ever Dalek commit suicide. Even up until the last episode some people people were still expecting it to be Davros. Of course they were wrong since it turned out to be the Dalek Emperor who'd survived the 'Time War'. D'uh.

You would have thought that would nailed that stupid theory on the head then and there – but no, it keeps returning like a bad smell with someone new enthusing over it like they've discovered the real genuine Holy Grail. Especially now with the return imminent of the real proper Dave Ross.

The theory goes when Adam was taken to the future – and sneaked off to have the quick operation to have himself a computer chip implant to be able to access the full extent of year 200,000 human knowledge and history. Then using Rose's super-phone to ring his parents ansaphone in 2012 and leave himself a message containing some of that knowledge.

Now what's the link between him and becoming the creator (or even re-creator) of the Daleks?

Er... Merely having that hole in the centre of his head and the fact he once met a Dalek. Because Davros has a glowing eye-thingy in the centre of his head – which acts as a replacement for his busted eyes – this is supposed to be the same thing as Adam's brain hole. And... and... and... Er, no, that's it.

So he's supposed to have all that Earth knowledge (but he hasn't) – and such seething hatred of the Doctor for dumping him back home - he's somehow able to recreate the Dalek race to act as revenge...

The theory ignores the fact that Adam doesn't actually have any of that knowledge from the future – his hole-in-the-head just meant he could interpret it from the tape he downloaded onto and the Doctor destroyed that.

The theory also doesn't explain as to whether he was supposed to get over to Skaro somehow and become Davros and create the Daleks... or -what start building them in the garage?

It also wouldn't make any sense dramatically..

How would that play?

From out of the shadows rolls the Doctor's old nemesis...

“Davros!”

“Aaah, Hello Doc-tor you've changed – but er... actually no. No, I'm not Davros, remember me? – I'm Adam...I've changed a bit too...”

---

But you know what ... from this picture - it looks an awful lot like the 'old' Doctor after the Master had aged him...

The Doctor as Davros - mmmm, well there have been a few rumours of 'botched regenerations'.

But then there might have been a bit of human-timelord- dalek hybrid spare after the 'Evolution of the Daleks' episode last year... mmmm cloning...

Update - But you know, after looking at this pic for a while - with it looking SO much like the aged 'Beating of Drums' Doctor - I'm starting to wonder if it isn't a photoshop mock up...

A complete farce

This is like something out of an old Ealing Comedy film. Only without any loveable barmy eccentric characters.

BBC NEWS | UK | Secret terror files left on train.

well - I'm appalled

So Gordon got his way did he? And it just points out to me what is wrong with the whole political system in this country. It annoys me because a whole raft of things - plain good old fashioned common sense, issues of human rights and civil liberties, even public relations, etc. etc. have been jettisoned all because Gordon Brown wanted to be seen as a tough leader. No - Mr Brown - error - you've only shown yourself up to be an stubborn thick-headed idiot - one who can't see when they're wrong - again! That's not what counts as good leadership skills. Moreover by continually fighting this on-going "war on terror" - against a fantasy villainous non-existent organisation - by demolishing civil rights laws and freedoms which where fought for by our ancestors is not a good path to be heading down. By going against a cross-party revolt to get your own petulant little way has sealed your fate. It's pretty much guaranteed you won't be re-elected at the next election - you may just as well have walked across the floor and handed over the keys to number 10 to Cameron.


BBC NEWS | Politics | Was victory worth it for Brown?

When I start agreeing with a Tory who has this to say:

"This cannot go on. It must be stopped and for that reason today I feel it is incumbent on me to make a stand," he told reporters.

"At least my electorate and the nation as a whole will have had the opportunity to debate and consider one of the most fundamental issues of our day - the ever intrusive power of the state into our lives, the loss of privacy, the loss of freedom and the steady attrition undermining the rule of law."

David Davis' resignation speech.

There's something really wrong going on.

45's - a set on Flickr

45's - a set on Flickr

Picture Sleeves

Compare and contrast

Number of children and pensioners living in poverty rises

with

The boardroom bonanza

and

What credit crunch? City bankers receive £13bn bonuses this year

proving there's still actually money around - it's just not being spread around equably.

Funny that.

The Ciak: Handmade in Italy

Mmmmm - I bought a plain paper sketchbook one of these - and wasn't impressed. The paper was too thin and any pen I used resulted in lots of blotty/show through. And I wish people (especially online retailers) would stop confusing leather with plastic. Anyhoo - I've ended up going striaght back to moleskines.

The Ciak: Handmade in Italy

Americans take 41 million fewer flights

I'd wager it isn't the fear of terrorists being onboard which is stopping people flying, but all the insane amount of utterly pointless 'security' measures imposed on them. Which when you think about it - isn't bad going for a terrorist organisation that doesn't really exist.

*sigh* when is America (and by extension the UK) going to return to some semblance of sanity and stop being so stupidly, childishly paranoid?

Americans take 41 million fewer flights, survey shows - CNN.com

I forgot to add...

what with regard to the Hollywood War of the Worlds films, the George Pal one and the more recent Spielberg version (which I haven't got around to seeing yet - thanks to my allergy to Tom Cruise), and the aforementioned TV series -- what I don't understand is why anyone hasn't ever made a true-to-the-original-novel adaptation and set it in period England. We in the UK are usually falling over ourselves to make period pieces. And these days with the growing interest in steam-punk it could be quite an awesome thing.

I wonder if it's because Paramount bought up all the rights to the book or something?

1st Update: I read 5 minutes later that that's exactly what happened. Back in the 1930s H G Wells sold the rights to Paramount in perpetuity. Tsk. To think there might even have been a 'War of the Worlds' film directed by Alfred Hitchcock - or even by Orson Welles.

2nd Update: Oh. Someone called Timothy Hines did make a period version in 2005. Apparently it wasn't much good. *sigh*

Dimly remembered sci-fi. Part 1. War of the Worlds - the TV series

[This is the part I'm writing without the benefit of any prior research – relying on my dodgy memory alone.]

I remember watching a TV series in the late 80s - early 90s that was based on the classic 1950s film 'the War of the Worlds'. (There was this 'cool' logo of a three-fingered reptilian-like hand grasping the Earth.)

Now the film itself was an odd riff on the classic H. G. Wells novel of the same name. I say riff because it changed so much from the original – such as transplanting the original time and place of the original -which was Victorian England and relocated them off to what was then contemporary Hollywood.

The 1980s TV series took the riff even further off the tracks of the original. Although it was supposedly a follow on from the devastating events of the film – everyone in the world had undergone some sort of collective mass-amnesia and no longer remembered anything about any invasion. Which had to have been some feat considering the destroyed cities, the scorched earth and reduced-to-rubble landmarks and sheer masses of dead bodies they must have had to contend with. That's even without the huge numbers of fallen alien spacecraft and actual alien bodies which must have been laying around all over the place. I mean - it's not on the scale of where a postit note had fallen off whatever it had been stuck to and got lost under the sofa... this is denial on a global scale – and that's what the series proposes and yet, unless I missed something, never bothered to explain properly.

Notice how I keep saying aliens rather than Martians? That's because in the show they'd decided they weren't Martians – they were called something else -some nonsense made-up word beginning with M and they now came from deep space. I guess by then current scientific knowledge meant no one believed life on Mars was plausible any more. Which is a bit rich considering the many other implausibilities in the story lines.

So this was a world where although slightly darker and mildly dystopian isn't too dissimilar to ours. Apart from no one remembering that huge alien invasion - no one believes in aliens either. Well, except for a tiny handful of people, and luckily for humanity - a small handful of scientists who are the heroes of the series. Since they were just about the only thing standing between us and a plucky group of eeeeevil aliens who'd somehow managed to survive the nasty cold virus that had killed off their first invasion fleet and were now living hidden deep underground somewhere – dressed up in gas masks and rubber cloaks and tubing which they must have managed to steal from a fetish rubber wear outfitters. They had lots of TV sets and computer monitors too and hundreds of minions at large in the world (well California, or maybe Canada – or wherever it was supposedly set) the minions were aliens who had taken over human bodies and they were generally up to no good. They're seemed to involve lots of genetic experiments making alien-human hybrids the way they do... and um other stuff I can barely remember. Probably making various weapons and terraforming and other over-complicated ways of taking over the world.

The heroes where some head scientist bloke, some girly girl
and a super-intelligent computer expert African-American who was wheelchair bound (if they'd have made him gay too they'd have covered all their token bases in one), and some Native American Indian military man (I think.)

I vaguely remember that the head scientist's mother or grandmother or some close relative was in an old people's home and everyone thought she was extreme schizophrenic nut job and kept having visions of what the naughty aliens were up to... having some sort of telepathic link to them for no readily explained reason. Of course no one believed in any of her visions and dire warnings – except for the head scientist... As is the stereotype in these things her room was covered in her drawings of her various visions... (I should compile a list of where this happens in various films and TV series sometime.)

I'm also remembering the second series was a quite a bit different from the first – they killed off a few of the heroes (notably the black wheelchair guy – which was a mistake what with him being one of the most likeable characters) - and the aliens were now squabbling and having political power struggles among themselves for no very good reason – since they seemed to be coming along quite nicely in their plans of messing up the world.

It was quite gory too for a TV series. There were melted bodies and gouged out eyes and other 'yeeesh' moments.

It even had an cliff hanger ending of sorts – where a super-soldier dancer alien lady with a gigantic big hair perm and Rayban shades made weird shapes and shot light rays out of her hands and was able to dispatch any bad aliens with ease. She teleported in from nowhere and joined forces with the hero team – kicked alien ass and then beamed back home again – but not before sending a quick message to her home world. Muttering in her alien language something along the lines that the only reason she and her race where willing to help us get rid of the Martian aliens was that they wanted to herd us as a food supply for themselves. Yikes! Taking about leaping out of the fire into the frying pan.

I get the impression that it wasn't a particularly loved series - I certainly never saw it repeated anywhere - (and dammit isn't that what the UK sci-fi channel is for?)

---

Now this is the bit where I actually do some research and provide a few links:

Wikipedia Entry.

Oh look - It's actually out on DVD. Anyone going to buy it me as a present? Wonder if there's a region 2 pal version or if there'll ever be a season 2?

War of the Worlds Episode Reviews.

TV series.

A Picture Of Something Chillingly Orwellian (from The Herald )

A Picture Of Something Chillingly Orwellian (from The Herald )

Remote Control Talking Davros

Toys as spoilers - cool.

Remote Control Talking Davros

Making Sense of the Rising Cost of College | OurFuture.org

And who had the bright idea in our country to replace a grants system with student loans - meaning only the wealthier middle class families could send their children to University - and meaning working class kids had a lot less chance of getting themselves out of poverty?

Seriously - i don't even know why we even bother to have our parliament -except as a showy tourist attraction and to keep quite a few people in a cushy job - when all we ever do is blindly copy whatever the USA do - or do what the EU tells us to...

Making Sense of the Rising Cost of College | OurFuture.org

Silence in the Library

Of course the trouble with having a two-parter is that it gives you plenty of time to think as to what might happen before the nest episode shows.

So here's what I'm guessing...

Well – we know it being only half way through the series – Donna is in no way going to be dead for long. She was hijacked mid-transportation for her own safety – just before the Vashta Nibblers were able to grab her...

Indeed -from the horse's mouth as it were, she has been saved. Saved like a computer program. I know from spoilers that Donna pays a little visit to her own past – where she chats to a certain Miss Evangelista who's wearing a black funeral veil and is seen in a playground with some young girls all dressed in identical red coats – at one point even wearing her wedding dress again.

We know they're on the biography section of the Library planet... I'm guessing that all the information that makes up Donna (her soul if you like) -her Data Ghost - has been stored within her own biography file (good filing) – which is why she's visiting her own life. Bet you gets a few spoilers of her own from that – this is foreshadowing on steroids.

We also know the Library has flesh banks – where the donated faces are stored. I'll guess the rest of her body is stored there... apart from her fce... yeeeesh.

Which is all pretty gruesome really... ew. But better than being nibbled to death by shadow-dwelling dust motes.

But after the Vastna whatsits have been vanquished by next week – there's a way CAL can rejoin the two again – along with the other 4022 Library people who were saved.

What's CAL? I think it's the Library's security computer system – which is so mind-bogglingly vast – that it's developed sentience – it's even dreaming – and it currently believes it's self to be a little girl. I don't know what her father represents but I doubt if it's up to any good. Although he and Dr Moon could represent other aspects of the computer's OS. Yeah. It's all very 'matrix-y' but what you gonna do?

How's the Doctor going to thwart the Vashta Nerada? Not got a clue – but zooming through some sort of vortex with his sonic screwdriver will have something to do with it...

These shadows - mmmm just wondering if they have anything to do with that there coming darkness Rose mentioned in the trailer.

Quibbles:

I hope Stephen Pembleton has a lot more to do next episode – because he had so little to do in this one. It seems a waste him even being there otherwise...

Why bananas are a parable for our times

Why bananas are a parable for our times

...and this is why capitalism can not save the world...

Real Satellite Channels

Wedding TV

Horse and Country

Sky Real Lives

Wine TV

Baby Channel

Luxe TV

Fashion TV

Bedroom tv

that's without venturing into the shopping, dating, and religion channels - which are just totally scary...

Duff fan - oooh yeeeeah.

Graham Duff's own site.


Nebulous Fan Site.

Ideal.

2005 Interview.

The Perils of Privatization

Gosh. Letting big companies run essential infrastructure and services for profit - is a recipe for disaster? Who knew. The privatisation of the water companies in the UK has been a fiasco here too.

The Perils of Privatization | The American Prospect

The Cute Boys of Doctor Who

Aren't they scrummy?
(That's an 'ideal' ref. btw.)

(postmodernbarney.com)

The Book List

The person who made the book shelf for the official Doctor Who web site was very clever.

1. The French Revolution.
In the pilot episode 'An UnEarthly Child' history school teacher Barbara hands Susan (the Doctor's grand daughter) a book on 'The French revolution' – Susan proclaims 'it didn't happen that way'.

2. The Time Machine – H G Wells.
The author hung around with the 6th Doctor in 'Timelash'. And the (7th) Doctor was reading it at the beginning and again at the end of the Doctor Who movie as the 8th Doctor (McGann). You could say it book-ended the film -hah.

3. Monty Python's Big Red Book.
(Dunno how that got in there. I know John Cleese had a guest spot once - but other than that... Obviously it's a favourite of someone's.)

4. Everest in easy stages.

5. A journal of impossible things – by John Smith.
Well... Did Nurse Joan find a publisher for the Doctor's scribblings then? That would provide a few tidbits of information for his enemies wouldn't it?

6. 'Type 40 TT Capsule Complete Manual'
Romana's preferred reading - the TARDIS manual.

7. The Black Orchid.

8. Understanding Telebiogenesis
Nyssa was on about trying to find a book on it in Castrovalva. It might be just a posh, more scientific word for regeneration.

9. Brigit Jones's Diary.
(Is that the closest thing they could get to Harriet Jones's Diary since there was an act of parliament preventing her from having one? Is this some sort of a foreshadowing hinty-hint?)

Homepage Secret-ness

Already people are up to speed on what some the books on the bookshelves refer to. No one's copped yet that 'the History of the Universe' (by Oolon Caluphid - and also mentioned in 'The Hitch hiker's guide to the Galaxy*) was being read by the Tom Baker's Doctor in 'Destiny of the Daleks'. A story that featured the search for a certain Dave Ross...

*A certain Douglas Adams worked on Doctor Who for a while dintcha know? Of course you did. That's why there are still little nods and references to him and Hitchhiker's throughout the new series.

TV.com Forums - Homepage Secret-ness (SPOILERS)

SPOILER ALERT

Phone calls database considered

"Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne called the proposals 'an Orwellian step too far'.

He said ministers had 'taken leave of their senses if they think that this proposal is compatible with a free country and a free people'.

'Given the appalling track record of data loss, this state is simply not to be trusted with such private information,' said Mr Huhne."

Eric Cartman: America's Favorite Little $@#&*% : NPR

Eric Cartman: America's Favorite Little $@#&*% : NPR

Cory Doctorow: Our dangerous statistical ignorance

(Of course what's not being mentioned here is that ALL Governments whether left or right learning inherently distrust the people they purport to represent. A few short decades ago politics was about ideologies - but all that idealism has gradually died away. What's left is their pretense that they can protect us from the boogie men out there... the bigger the pretended potential fears - the more they can get away with in taking away the hard-won freedoms previous generations fought for... oh and our privacy too.)

Cory Doctorow: Our dangerous statistical ignorance | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Moffat Replaces RTD!

omg.
This pretty much means that if anything - Doctor Who is only going to get even better!

Moffat Replaces RTD! - News - Doctor Who - Online Magazine & Fan Site

The Wrong Man

Nobody gets that Elections aren't ever won anymore. You need things like getting people to rally behind an ideology, a cause, something to do that. Now it's just that the current Government loses. And Gordon Brown - well sorry, but he looks like one big loser.

k-punk: The Wrong Man

(Great little piece right until the last two paragraphs - where the last one falls apart into incoherent gibberish. Media studies hey. Gotta tack on a reference to Baudrillard (or some such) -or they're just not doing their job.

Q & A with Joss Whedon, writer, producer and director - Los Angeles Times

Q & A with Joss Whedon, writer, producer and director - Los Angeles Times

What's a 'Trapper Keeper'?

I'm re-watching that old Southpark episode...

Trapper Keeper: Mead's Answer to the Swiss Army Knife.

wikipedia entry.

Official site.

We don't have them in the UK - of course now, it being stationery - I think I want one.

The trashcan laureate | Art & Architecture | guardian.co.uk Arts

Robert Rauschenberg's generous, epic vision captured the chaos of modern America.

Nouveau poor

One of the most annoying aspects of the 'credit crunch' is the sheer volume of middle class journos now 'playing at being poor'

Here's one example:

Jay Rayner finds some hits and misses in his Aldi shopping bag | Business | The Guardian

In the article notice how he's not economising by eating baked beans on toast or ramen noodles... funny that.

I'm going to start a list... Nouveau Poor watch.

The Crash Course | Chris Martenson

Uh-oh. 'Merika is doomed.

Apparently the next 20 years are going to have to be totally unlike the past 20 years.

Yay!

what silly knits the BBC are

"A Doctor Who fan who gave away knitting patterns which created vague recreations of the programme's aliens has been threatened with legal action by the BBC for copyright infringement."

and

BBC unhappy over Dr Who knitting patterns.

But if the patterns were being sold on e-bay...

Gone in an Instant

Top Photographers Angry Over Polaroid’s Demise -- New York Magazine

Stephen Fry talky

Stephen Fry's talk on the future of public broadcasting.

interviewr | Mattias Adolfsson

interviewr | Mattias Adolfsson

Jenny

Odd this one. It took me a couple of viewings to like it properly. But I'm left with a few quibbles... (and they (RTD, Alice Troughton, David Tennant) even mentioned them in the commentary too.)

Nigel Terry - the white haired General guy - Cobb. Surely he's a LOT older than just one week old? So why doesn't he remember things from before then? Tsk. They should have had all the cast in this episode in their 20s and that would have made things a little more believable. A bit. Since I do have a problem with the war thing having only lasted a week. A year, six months - possibly but just the one single week? Please. Also - when they're talking about so many generations - what was it? Something like 20 a day... or so - that's going to be an awful lot of dead bodies - where did they put them all?

Hath Peck - drowning. In the commentary RTD mentioned it wasn't the writer's fault - he was told he had to have quicksand in there - a fx of glass breaking to try and make it work. You need to hear the commentary for this bit.

There was a few points of similarity with the Sontaran episodes.

Poor Martha getting fully emersed in gloop again. Terra-forming gases. [The Sontarans where terraforming Earth to make it into a massive cloning planet) Cloning soldiers for war. The whole cloning off-spring business itself.

Now either this is a mistake on the production staff or is, as I suspect, part of the story arc. Because (and I've only watched this twice so I might have missed something) there wasn't anything overtly arc-y I could detect. No mention of disappearing bees, no sightings of Rose (they've only happened in present day Earth so far), no cryptic prophecies - which leads me to conclude the cloning thing is part of the arc. Maybe Jenny will put in an appearance at the end too - if she can find herself a time-machine on her travels that is...

So the finale looks like it's going to involve Davros, Daleks, clones and cloning,
invisible back-hugging insects?.

*mmmmmm - strokes chin.*

Driving and cheap flights lay waste to recycling campaign - Times Online

"the number of cars owned by British households had increased by five million to 27.8 million in the past decade. All regions have had an increase in car registration, but the North East and East Midlands have had the biggest growth, up 30 per cent each."

*sigh* I hate cars.

Driving and cheap flights lay waste to recycling campaign

Lost - Locke chosing objects that he owns

Gah.

So in the last episode of Lost 'Cabin Fever' we see the eternally unaging Alpert visit Locke and present him with a series of objects from which he has to chose those that 'already belong to him'.

Of course the Lost blogsters and even the official blogster at EW are inadvertently showing their complete ignorance of Tibetan Buddhism. You see, upon the death of the old Dalai Lama the wise old head monks of the Monastery use various mystical methods - reading signs and portents etc. to set out into the world to seek out the boy which contains the reincarnated soul of the Dalai Lama. Once they find the child they think is he -the final test is to present him with a series of objects and ask him to chose the personal belongings he remembers owning from his previous life.

So Locke is a little Buddha then - which could well explain his baldness and his mystical leanings. It also explains why he's so messed up - the poor dear has had his pre-destiny severely messed about with...

How to record TV in the modern age.

1. Turn on the Sky guide – scroll through miles and miles of days worth of EPG (Electronic Program Guide) to find the program/s you want.
   
   (IMPORTANT While you're there also take a note of the start and end times of all these things.)
   
   
2. Do this as many times as there are programs you want to record.
   Setting the Auto view is totally essential – but an easily and frequently overlooked step.



3. Have a little weep - it'll make you feel better.



4. Then go to your VCR or DVR and painstakingly set in all the times for those programs – remembering to add extra minutes to the beginning and end of the program - (because, despite having run TV broadcasting for decades now, the TV companies still can't manage to keep to a proper timetable -ever. No one knows why.


Be forewarned that if there's any sports event on at the time there's a very good chance it will over run and whatever you wanted to watch will run hours late or even be taken off air altogether. Even if 10 million people watch Doctor Who every week – the 12 people in the world who watch Hamster racing will get preference. Because it is sport and all sport is sacred - for some reason.)

After all that even if you've done everything perfectly correctly - and with so many steps it's easy to mess up – you'll find that whatever you record will be covered up by that bloody irritating giant blue reminder box anyway.

It was difficult enough in the days when we just had video cassette recorders – and then you could watch one thing and record another – bliss.

And people wonder why bit torrents are so popular?

P.S. I can't afford a Sky plus and I resent having to ay extra for one. So ner.

Self-sacrifice in Doctor Who – a list

Season One.

Ep. 2.
The End of the World.
Tree Princess Jabe.

The Unquiet Dead.
The maid Gwyneth.

Father's Day
Peter Tyler – Rose's Dad.

The Doctor Dances.
(Near-miss, rescued at the very last second – Captain Jack.)

The Parting of the Ways.
The controller.
The broadcasters.
Lynda with a 'y'.
Captain Jack. (Resurrected.)

Season Two.

Tooth and Claw
Sir Robert MacLeish.

School Reunion.
K-9

Satan Pit.
Mr Jefferson.

Doomsday.
Yvonne ('You shall not pass') Hartman
(Near-miss – Rose.)

Season Three.

Gridlock.
The Face of Boe.

42
Captain Kath (Eastender Michelle) McDonnell

Christmas Special.
Voyage of the Damned.

Bannakaffalatta.
Foon Van Hoff.
Astrid Perth.


Any one I might have missed?

David Aaronovitch - is a retard

Hi, I'm David Aaronovitch - I'm a middle-class retard who is lucky enough to live in (or near) a city, I own a car, has a bank account, a credit card, have e-mail, and the internet - so can order things online [well... because shops on the internet don't use the postal service to deliver packages do they? - oh no - magic pixies do that] so anything that is outside of my direct experience is a fabrication and a lie....

Post offices: we killed them | David Aaronovitch - Times Online

I, (speaking as me again not as Aaronovitch) on the other hand, living in the non-privileged real world, do use the Post Office - so I've had the experience of having had local offices close on me and so have had the annoyance of having to go into the town centre to see the queues for the PO go out of the building and on to the street and curl round the building... I guess none of THOSE people needed to use the Post Office either.... they just liked queuing for the sheer fun of it.

So I'm particularly annoyed that this pompous selfish moronic prat - should be paid to write drivel like this. He should be writing children's fiction about rainbows and unicorns - it's obviously a world he has more in common with since he plainly doesn't get out into the real world much.

CCTV boom 'failing to cut crime'

BBC NEWS | UK | CCTV boom 'failing to cut crime' : "'Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It's been an utter fiasco: only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV."

Well dur.

If you replace any of the hi-tech solutions we've been presented with during the past 20 years - it's always been a fiasco. It's always cost quite stupidly and scarily high amounts of money and never done whatever it was brought into do properly. Why's that? Well, I'm guessing it's because computer and tech. salesmen are very good at selling their snake oil solutions and politicians are - bless 'em - woefully ignorant when it comes to technology. It's all so much 'magic boxes' and 'fairy dust' to them.

110 major computer failures hit NHS.

The child support agency's messy history.

Not to mention the recent hoo-ha where Government departments have been rather cavalier with the public's personal information.

And now the MI5 fancies tracking everyone's movements - all in the name of preventing terrorism of course. Despite it being, by anyone's account, still a very rare thing.

Two televisual observations

Lost is so damn complicated now - I see that Sky One has started showing special 'enhanced' (I'd have said annotated) versions - where they have pop-up notes at the bottom of the screen reminding us of previous episodes/happenings/plot points/ - characters - and on screen 'easter eggs'. It's actually pretty useful. I've learnt stuff I'd missed before.

Another random thought I've had - No one can deny that the new Doctor Who took a lot of 'Buffy' lessons - (for example how they changed the show's format to it's current one-single-story per show and having the longer season arcs where the last two to three episodes have the Doctor up against a 'big bad' - another key lesson they learnt was to have strong female characters with distinct home lives) only now with the upcoming 6th episode - it looks like they've gone for the whole hog and given themselves what looks like their very own super powered slayer-style character.

The Doctor's Daughter - hey? Don't suppose she's going to eventually turn out be Susan's mother from the first Doctor's era. Wouldn't that be something? But I guess an idea like that is going to be way too tricky and complicated to work in... mores the pity.

Compare and contrast

This article:

Junkfood Science: Starving toddlers mistaken for “healthy eating”

with this one:

Too fat to toddle: How plump kids are transformed at fat camp.

and ponder - how is it after all the millions of years human beings have been stomping around this planet - how so many of us have become so damn stupid that we don't know how to feed our own children properly anymore?

The human race is doomed.

Poisoned Sky

Awesome: The return of the ship Valiant.

Best lines:

"Back of the neck."
“Are you my mommy?”

Arc:
A brief second's glimpse of Rose shouting mutely before the Doctor's transmission linked to the Sontarans.

Still loving Donna - still being irritated by big teethed Martha

YouTube - is broken

YouTube Is Down. Across The World. Yikes.

i heart art / Sketch book - a set on Flickr

i heart art / Sketch book - a set on Flickr

Playground superbug can kill children within days

Eeeeek!

Playground superbug can kill children within days.

Superbug fears hit playgrounds.

But does this mean even more over-anxious middle class parents are going to be keeping their already over-cosseted little brats indoors and eventually becoming even more dysfunctional?

Professor Greenfield, promoter extraordinaire of science, has written a book that makes routine auguries – global warming, economic downturns – look like mere gloomy hand-wringing. A specialist in brain degeneration, Greenfield is predicting that our teen generation is headed for a sort of mass loss of personal identity. She calls it the Nobody Scenario. By spending inordinate quantities of time in the interactive, virtual, two-dimensional, cyberspace realms of the screen, she believes

that the brains of the youth of today are headed for a drastic alteration. It’s as if all that young grey cortical matter is being scalded and defoliated by a kind of cognitive Agent Orange, depriving them of moral agency, imagination and awareness of consequences.

“They are destined to lose an awareness of who and what they are: not someones, or anyones, but nobodies, eh!” That expressive mouth widens again, the lower lip ripens. “The time is well nigh,” she says, “to explore the impact of these technologies.”

David Morrissey to star in Doctor Who

Whooop whooop!

David Morrissey to star in Doctor Who Christmas special featuring deadly Cybermen | the Daily Mail

BBC Three gives 'Being Human' a series

YES! Oh yes. I am very pleased about this!

Television - News - BBC Three gives 'Being Human' a series - Digital Spy

‘Bold’ Bank of England? Don’t credit it

Faced with a crisis, the best idea that the Treasury and the Bank can come up with is to try to keep the economy afloat by effectively pumping billions of pounds into it. Not to restructure anything or make any fundamental changes, but to extend the credit to grease the palms to keep the racket going.

I've been saying this sort of thing for years... the UK has been zooming up the wrong road for decades now. Like how we barely make anything to sell to the rest of the world anymore [except for weapons - which invariably get used against us - d'oh - but that's a rant for another time] - Thatcher destroyed a lot of the old industries (which was more to break up the working class power base than anything else) to replace them with the stock market (yay! let's make money by moving money around the globe) and the phenomenon of 'hostile take over bids' - leaving ordinary people to do what? Buy and sell each other's houses? - cut each other's hair? sell each other insurance and debt consolidation loans from call centres? Blah blah blah - rant rant rant.

Four sound effects that made TV history

Boooooing - whooooosh - whhiiiirrrrrr - bloooop bloooop bloooop -Ex-ter-min-ate! Ex-ter-min-ate!

and so on...

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Four sound effects that made TV history

So...

I was re-watching Doctor Who confidential - and ~I had this revelation:

Russell T. has admitted in interviews that he always rather liked the idea of being a companion of the Doctor's. Not the Doctor himself but one of his assistants...

So having learnt his 'Buffy' lessons well - when he had the chance to bring back Doctor Who he centered it all on Rose... but now in the fourth series we finally get to see a companion who's probably the closest to how Russell would be if he were the companion. Someone who's smart, very clever and willing to take the Doctor to task for his various decisions.... and about his same age range.

mmmmm?

Pahf!

Oh look a PC magazine I forgot ever buying - oooh and how terribly handy - it has a copy of CyberLink PowerDirector 5VE on the cover disc. I was on the look out for something to edit my tiny short movies in for flickr and this blog and youtube and that...

Install. (Minor grumble from the installation about me having a later version of Quicktime than it wanted to install.) Get a free serial number from website. Reboot. Load. Feh. Annoyed by it insisting on loading it's own sample files crap. Try to import an avi I want to edit. PowerDirector vanishes. Huh? Maybe it's upset because Picasa is running at the same time? Load PD same annoying sample. files load - try to drag and drop the avi - ooooh progress bar promisi... - oh no. Vanishes again. No warnings - no wanting to send a crash report home. Just... nothing!

PowerDirector Sux then. Sux baaaaaaad.

season 1 Heroes in 6 minutes

(Now I need someone to do a similiar treatment for Lost - because even now, I'm sick of it being dragged out forever.)

Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Episode 6 - The Doctor's Daughter sound like it's going to be a doozy

The Child Support Agency is involved, says Davies. Donna is "literally like Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder, telling the Doctor what to do as a father. She says, 'I've seen men like that round our estate, with pushchairs and prams. You've gone into dadshock.'"

Space Ood-ity

The poor Ood.

Good solid story. A few seconds of Tate's comedy character style of acting briefly slipped out (as it has before) but was tightly held in check - to be soon replaced by what's becoming her trade mark compassion and sympathy and awe. If this carries on Donna is fast becoming one of my all time favourite companions*. Although Rose is a really tough act to follow but then Martha is a easy one - I never took to Martha.

Didn't spot anything that was immediately 'story arc-y' on the first viewing. Is the phrase 'all songs must end' (do the 'sound of drums' end too?) going to allude to anything? But then the Ood themselves are telepathic rather than prophetic.

[*I had to laugh when I read in someone's blog how Tate can't act. Because - you know the RSC just take in anybody off the street don't they.]

Totnes, Devon: the home of boho chic

It's a fine place.

Totnes, Devon: the home of boho chic - Times Online

Victor Keegan: Corporate dinosaurs kill sites - in a Flickr

Oh look, yet another person who's got the wrong end of the stick...

I've noticed this again and again - those who object most to videos on flickr are those that seem to think flickr is gearing up to challenge youtube. Dur. No it isn't. I've never seen it but apparently there's a whole yahoo videos section - now that's
trying to compete with youtube. (except for to be the 'yellow pages' directory of the web - way back at it's start up I don't think Yahoo has ever had an original idea of it's own - ever since it's just either just copied whatever everyone else was doing (ie. webmail - trying to be a 'portal') or else bought a original innovative company up (and historically manage to trash whatever they touched - Geocities, egroups - etc. and does anyone even use widgets? Aren't they just well, naff?)

Consquently it wouldn't bother me in the least if Microsoft were to buy up Yahoo! - they're both so clueless and deeply uncool and such bad copyists - they pretty much deserve each other.

Victor Keegan: Corporate dinosaurs kill sites - in a Flickr | Technology | The Guardian

Lore Sjöberg's Alt Text: Flickr Fans Flustered Over Video Posting

Lore Sjöberg's Alt Text: Flickr Fans Flustered Over Video Posting: "Flickr now allows users to post short videos. This is the worst thing that could happen in this world or any possible alternate timeline, at least if you ask the members of the 'We Say NO to Videos on Flickr' group."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Innocent photographer or terrorist?

Misplaced fears about terror, privacy and child protection are preventing amateur photographers from enjoying their hobby, say campaigners.

Sia @ Bush Hall, London on September 18th, 2007. - a set on Flickr

Sia @ Bush Hall, London on September 18th, 2007. - a set on Flickr

The Honeywell H316 Kitchen Computer

via swapatorium. The kitchen computer.

The Honeywell H316 Kitchen Computer

This so reminds me of the 'Look around you' sketch on the Lady computer - the Petticoat 5 -made by women for women.

Opinion: An XP Lite would be a smart mobile strategy for Microsoft

Opinion: An XP Lite would be a smart mobile strategy for Microsoft: "An XP Lite would be a smart mobile strategy for Microsoft"

Yes, it would be if Microsoft and Apple weren't all about the bloat. Adding ever more 'features' - more 'options' - more and more and eye candy.

ooooh Up Pompeii

There's no point in me adding to the masses of reviews already out there. Not when some of them are better written than anything I could write. Like this one...

Doctor Who 4.2: The Fires of Pompeii

It’s a moral dilemma that has haunted Doctor Who since its earliest days. While the Doctor has always meddled in the affairs of other planets and present day Earth, our planet’s history has always been treated differently. Ever since strong-headed schoolteacher Barbara Wright failed to stop the Aztecs from performing human sacrifices, the message has been clear: you cannot change the past.

Trust Donna — brash, loud, intelligent Donna — to ask the question, “Why not?” and refuse to give up until she got a satisfactory answer. It was that process that formed the emotional backbone of this episode, producing some truly heartbreaking performances from both David Tennant and Catherine Tate.

Review By Scott Matthewman

Save to say... yup. Donna completely won me over this episode. I enjoyed the cute silly little language jokes (T. J. Maxximus) - they got the balance between comedy and tragedy/drama just right. I hope they can keep it up throughout the rest of the series. In the commentary for 'Voyage of the Damned' in upcoming episode 11 RTD says "Catherine Tate gave the finest bit of acting I've ever been associated with" executive producer Julie Gardner says 'devastating'. I can believe it - I've re-watched Pompeii a couple of times now and I've been in near tears every time.

Now that prophecy pis*ing contest between Lucius and Evelina.
So - we already know Rose is returning. (But 'she' could as easily be Martha, Sarah Jane -etc. But we all know - it's Rose.)

"There's something on your back" - this is a big part of the arc. I'm surprised the Doctor didn't pick up on it and gave Donna a once-over with his sonic screwdriver [fnoar-fnoar] once they'd finished all their good deeds for the day and got back to the Tardis... but then it took the 9th Doctor - how many times before he and Rose noticed 'Bad Wolf'?

The Medusa Cascade has been mentioned before - in "Last of the Time Lords" -I think.

I give this ep 10 out of 10.

who ARE these people?

BBC NEWS | Politics | Cabinet faces: Old and new

Jack Straw in charge of Justice? That's got to be a joke.

Compare and contrast

Fears of food shortage as rice prices keep climbing.

Haiti food protests.

meanwhile in the UK:

Fruit and vegetable waste clogs landfills.

Every year millions of tonnes of supermarket food ends up in landfill sites. At the same time there are still millions of people, including one in three children, living in poverty in the U.K.

(Although getting supermarkets not to sell fruit and veg at the ridiculously high mark-up prices they do - and then allowing them to just throw it away when they can't get those prices... That's a scandal.)

Flickr revolt: namby-pambiest NIMBY ever!

Flickr revolt: namby-pambiest NIMBY ever!

nausea inducing 3D wobble vision - yay!

So many TV programme on Houses - so very many.

BBC 1.
'Homes under the Hammer'
People buy below par properties at auction - renovate them - by painting them beige.

Channel 4.
Property Ladder.
Bossy posh woman visits people renovating their homes (people who've always got more money than sense) berates them a bit. One last visit - they've painted everything beige. Posh woman then congratulates them on their supreme good taste in beige.

Five.
Put your money where your house is.
A team of people go into someone's home, and paint everything beige.

House Doctor.
Bossy Californian woman Ann Maurice comes into people's homes - dresses everything to look like it's a hotel room. Paints everything beige.

Seriously - you can easily spend a whole day's TV viewing looking at beige room after beige room after beige room after beige room.

WTF is going on? Have paint manufacturers suddenly stopped making any other colours of paint? What's with the severe chromophobia? Why do so many people want to live in glass of Bailey's - or baby sick? When is it going to end?

Flickr Adds Video Sharing for 'Pro' Members | massive storrm in a teacup breaks out

Well, I for one am in favour of this. Mainly because I understand where flickr are coming from. I often use my digital cameras to take the odd little movie - just to capture things that you can't get from stills. Now these movies are so short that it never seemed worth the effort involved in uploading them up to youtube. But now I can upload them to flickr with the minimum of fuss - where they can nestle along with the stills that often come out of the very same cameras.

Of course there's a very loud contingent on flickr - whose feathers get ruffled at any hint of a change - now hollaring loudly that they don't want video on flickr, they're all scared it's going to turn into youtube. *sigh* Way to totally miss the point guys.

By the by - whatever happened to last year's big issue about Germany and other countries having 'safety filters'/aka censorship forced onto them. I guess people have forgotten all about that now. Just like they'll eventually settle down and forget about this.

Flickr Adds Video Sharing for 'Pro' Members | Compiler from Wired.com

I don't wanna go to the Phorm

Phorm: Your questions answered -sort of.

Phorm

Bad Phorm.

BT and Phorm secretly tracked 18,000 customers in 2006.

Me - I've always said advertising is the toxic pollution of the post-industrial age.

If advertisers have such a desperate need to put their ads in front of people's eyes - they should pay the people to look at them - not big stupid companies to secretly hoodwink people into seeing them.

Hey, then the unemployed can sit at home earning money looking at these ads and then they'd soon not end up not being unemployed any more and be able to buy some of those things they see advertised everyday. Wealthier people who simply haven't the time to sit through ads of various kinds could pay people to sit through the ads for them, like they already pay for housekeepers and personal trainers and what not. That'd save the government some money.

Can you tell I hate advertising - it's all such a waste of people's talents, creativity, time, effort, energy just to make people want things they don't really need. Just think what the human race could have accomplished if all of those things had been put into other things. We could be living in a world that had cures for cancer, no wars, clean energy, we'd be exploring the solar system, have personal robot servants, we could even have had jet packs!

OK I got carried away there. Meanwhile it's firefox & adblock for me.
It's always a shock for me to use someone else's browser - I forget how much people get bombarded by ads. They just mentally filter them out - I don't see how having personally targeted ads is going to work any better.

Top 10 *most annoying* Lost moments

When a show's new season HAS to be heavily promoted with the slogan 'the answers are coming' - then the flags already gone up that there's something going seriously wrong somewhere - don't you think?

Top 10 *most annoying* Lost moments « Dube’s World

China Most Polluted Place On Earth?

Oh dear. We're doomed.

UC Researchers: China Most Polluted Place On Earth? - Photos - KNTV | San Francisco

Carphone Warehouse stares down BPI and UK.gov

Good for them. I wish the other ISPs would grow some balls as well. Although virgin's toadying surprises me not - because they have their whole lame-ass Virgin media thing to protect. (Does the Virgin record label still exist?) After all - what's the point of broadband if it's not p2p? If you can't use it for that, well I'll be going back to dial-up. It's not as if video streaming works reliably enough to be pleasant to use. BBC iPlayer is the pooh, even Youtube has it's off days...

grumble grumble grumble...

Carphone Warehouse stares down BPI and UK.gov on three strikes | The Register

one law for the MP - another for the rest of us

Mmmmmm. And to think what an outcry the right-wingers are constantly making about 'dole scroungers', the sickness benefit claimants, the Pensioners - and yet - just look who's really got their fingers deep in the public purse...

MPs get paid a wage well in excess of the national average - yet they feel compelled to claim for petty things like a TV license, their council taxes, their mortgages, cleaners, - yet they so begrudge people on benefits the barest minimum they need to survive...

er... so it turns out that it's our politicians who are the real evil grasping twunts - the whole lot of them. [Like that was ever a surprise.]

I stand by my assertion that all MPs should get nothing more than minimum wage to live on. If they really think that's enough for a person to live on... then they can too. No extras. If they need a suit to go to work in - or for a state function they should be given a voucher - like they used to give to poor families so their children could get a school uniform. If they did that made being a politician into a vocation rather than a career - we'd get a lot less shady characters in there messing things up.

oh Gordon...

My, how things have changed...

The old Labour party used to heavily tax the very wealthy to have the money to spend on public services... etc.

But these days the current Labour Party has had the totally fantastic idea of taxing the poor more to help pay for taxing the better off less...

In the link above - it doesn't mention that those who'll be affected are: Students who work evenings and weekends (way to go to make going to university even harder), pensioners, young people under 25 in their first jobs, part time workers, and basically anyone who doesn't qualify for Tax Credits.

I think we're looking at a party that's developing a death wish...

New Doctor Who is an event for all

Here's a quick bit of Dr Who link dumping...

New Doctor Who is an event for all - icWales: "WRITER Russell T Davies has revealed that one of his main aims when reviving Doctor Who was to create a weekly “event” for the whole family."

---

Catherine on her Doctor Who doll: “Having not been really into the idea – frankly resisting it, but it was in the contract so I couldn’t get out of it. When they showed me the prototype of my doll, I loved it. I was literally running around. I don’t think I’m supposed to like it as much as I do.”

---

Who actors launch fourth series.

new Who campfire trailer

it's got great imagery except... it's got me worried. Because of stuff that's been leaked about the finale (well what you expect when you're filming in the streets of Cardiff? You're bound to attract some attention.) Anyhooo Donna sat around a campfire telling a story (and oh, reminding me of last season's Martha playing her apostle bit to the Doctor's Doddy the House-elf messiah) and the last line - "He'll come back to save us and this time I'll be ready - and just like that - pouff - we'll be gone." Why does that sound like a lead in to yet another 'reset button'? Or is that just me projecting?

Justin - Time - timelord?

Just flicking through channels to catch a Justin Trousersnake concert - and what's he wearing? Only a tight suit and tie worn with white sneakers - er hello, nick ideas much?

DR Book Club: Daydream Believers | Danger Room from Wired.com

DR Book Club: Daydream Believers | Danger Room from Wired.com

Top 10 Evil Human Experiments

Top 10 Evil Human Experiments - The List Universe: "Human experimentation and research ethics evolved over time. On occasion, the subjects of human experimentation have been prisoners, slaves, or even family members. In some notable cases, doctors have performed experiments on themselves when they have been unwilling to risk the lives of others. This is known as self-experimentation. This is a list of the 10 most evil and unethical experiments carried out on humans."

Will and CGI

So I'm sat there watching 'I am Legend' and thinking 'oh this is isn't too bad' and I went up thinking that right up to the point when the CGI vampire/zombies came in. *Sigh* I know CGI has come a long way these past few years - but they're still nowhere near convincing enough yet. If the film makers had been really smart they'd have kept all the monsters in the dark where we could never see them properly - it would have been a lot, lot more realistic and a lot more scary that way. The very first scene where we (hardly) see them in the dark was really good. If they had kept it like that throughout the rest of the film... But oooooh no, they had to let the effects department show off what they could do. So it's zombies running and racing and even crawling up walls, and flying through the air - an alpha male's close-up who has a mouth that can open much, much too wide without dislocating his jaw... and it all looks too much like one of Will Smith's last films - 'I, Robot' - another film where I thought the CGI was totally unconvincing - and they were supposed to be robots. It's Will Smith vs a not-too-distant relative of Mario for crying out loud.

Computer animation never works for me because there's obviously no gravity, no weight, no resistance, everything moves in an unnaturally smooth, far too perfect way, there's no muscles or skeletons involved. In fact the only places I think CGI excels is in depicting architecture, space ships - where there's no gravity and so you can expect a weird smoothness of motion, and out and out hyper-realistic cartoon style animation that the likes of Pixar do best. At least there you can easily forgive it's shortcomings because it's not ever trying to be anything other than what it is - it's honest to it's materials.

Which reminds me - as I was watching it and thinking 'what is it with Will Smith and CGI - he's done so many films with it now; the aforementioned 'I, Robot' (that was rubbish), the MIB films (amusing enough), 'Independence Day' (awful), and then they came to the scene where he mouths along with Donkey out of Shriek. As if to rub the CGI point home just for my benefit.

So it turns out - I still prefer 'proper monsters' that is -real actors or animatronics covered in latex, and paint and dripping goo - even now they're still the most convincing and frightening. CGI is just a cheap cop-out and Hollywood has come to rely on it far too heavily these days.

lost in ashes of torchwood

I hate it that there are so many people out in the interwebs who are better at writing about tv than me.

But any hoooo...

I'm still liking 'Ashes to Ashes' - but wish there was a bit more going on somehow. I notice there's an awful lot of red in the costumes and set design. I guess that's the blood from her having been shot in the real world. (But also the red and black combo was very big in the 80s for some reason) and apparently there's to be another series - it's going to be really depressing if she just dies at the end of all this.

By and large I've been feeling very let down by a lot of the episodes of Torchwood - but I liked the last one quite a bit with all the characters getting back stories at long last. I particularly liked the 1920s Torchwood and the female agents (although they come across as just a bit too 20th century 'girl power'-ish. I'd have liked them to have been more stiff-upper lip, prim and proper and starchy.) In fact I want to see them explore this further - a steampunk Torchwood battling Victorian/Georgian era space aliens would entertain me no end. But then I really liked 'the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' the books and the film.

Lost... oh hum. That's been so patchy -again. Can't say I cared much for the 'Meet Kevin Johnson' episode - I'm guessing they've laying it on thick for the Michael character only to allow him to redeem himself further down the line... and what's the odds that he have to sacrifice his life in order to do that? He'll probably tell one of the 'Oceanic 6' to "tell Walt I love/d him" before - I dunno blowing something up or dying in a hail of bullets - or something so they can escape. Although what would be much cooler would be for Michael not to die - remain on the island and then have (older taller) Walt going back to the Island to rescue (or to be with) his dad.

Oh, and as for killing off Rousseau - they'd better not have done that. Because that would be a very stupid thing for the writers to have done. even the dreary dullards Paolo and Nikki got a whole flashback episode to themselves before they were unceremoniously killed off in that tedious filler episode. But then again - the more they've shown of a character - usually the less I've liked them... oh dear, what does that tell you about the show? It also tells you I must have a masochistic streak to be still putting myself through this.


LOST IN THE ASHES OF TORCHWOOD

Caan can