Last Visible Blog 2.0

Pakistan’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Blogged with Flock

How have I never seen this version with Tori Spelling, William Shatner and Gary Coleman????

Blogged with Flock

I look at this on two levels. It was fun to watch and I got some laughs out of it, but man, this was one of the single worst plots I have ever seen on the new Who. It was just a lame plot - the villain is a freaking head on a forklift trying to destroy the earth to make stocks plummet in a revenge scheme, so he builds a luxury cruiser, calls it The Titanic, and gets the robots on it that are built to look like angels to go around a kill everyone while the ship goes to crash its nuclear payload into the earth and the Doctor leads a motley crew of personalities on a Poseidon Adventure in space.

That’s pretty dumb. And I’ve seen some crap 6th Doctor episodes.

And it’s not just a romping adventure on a doomed spaceship - nope, it’s got all these heavy, over the top melodramatic parts, heavy music and sad eyes that are just rather silly.

It felt like a pastiche — thankfully when you are just pulling different bits of things and putting them together, some of the bits are bound to be good, even if the creation as a whole isn’t that impressive. I liked the stuff about abandoned London and the Queen, though, and dug the little red cyborg guy with the funny name. And Tennant has grown into the role well. And there were some really funny parts.

Unfortunately, the low point in the series since its inception has to be the ending that featured the Doctor turning down Mr. Copper — apparently because he’s not a hot young chick. Scanning the blogs and the posting boards, this seems to be a major bone of contention with the episode and the series as a whole.

Especially disappointing after the string of greatness from Human Nature to Time Crash and after the run of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which managed to be excitingly shallow without ever being dumb.

Minor Who . . . and my kids didn’t seem too impressed with it either. Oh well, onto next series. I’m one of the few who is looking forward to Catharine Tate and loved her on last years Christmas show.

This article talks about research from the British Medical Journal and the Indiana University School of Medicine in regard to common health wisdom that ain’t true. I already knew about the 10% of the brain thing it talks about, as well as the hair and nail growth after death, but I did find it interesting that daily fluid intake doesn’t have to be confined to water, nor did I know about the tuth about tryptopan.

After finding I needed reading glasses and my eyesight was rapidly deteriorating, I looked into the strained eyesight thing and found it wasn’t based in any evidence.

Blogged with Flock

Raymond Briggs is a pretty incredible children’s author and illustrator - and also damned pessimistic. He ’s the real deal in the Roald Dahl sweepstakes, I think. Here’s a marvelous and cranky article on him.

Blogged with Flock

Sometimes I feel like boycotting Japanese culture because their policy towards whale hunting is backwards and loathsome.

Blogged with Flock

I guess he got bored with Philip Pullman.

Blogged with Flock

Blade Runner
Nirvana
The Matrix
Led Zeppelin
Family Guy
Will Smith

Depressing, but fascinating nonetheless - this article by Michael Pollan is an important read about the connection between industrialized meat and antibiotic resistant bacteria (now kills more people a year than AIDS!), as well as the strain we put on the bee population, how that is killing them off, and how that is going to devastate the ecological balance. Chilling stuff, do yourself a favor and read it - Pollan is the best.

I love it!

I’m not sure if it’s bigger than a capybara, though, which is the world’s largest rodent. It doesn’t look that big. But it is apparently as friendly.

As an extra bonus, this is part of the exploration of the “lost world” in New Guinea, which I spoke with Bruce Beehler about some time back. Cool stuff!