Amy: “Ever fancied someone you knew you shouldn’t? Hurts, doesn’t it? But kind of a good hurt.” This was by far my least favorite of the three new episodes we’ve seen so far this season. I’ll skip going into detail about the plot this week because basically it revolves around the Daleks coming back (yet again) and the Doctor being forced to choose between saving humans or destroying his oldest enemies. Was there really any doubt about what he would do? More discussion after the jump. I continue to find the relationship between Amy and the Doctor...
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Doctor Who, "The Beast Below"
Amy: So there are other Time Lords, yeah? Doctor: No. There were, but there aren’t… Just me now. Long story. It was a bad day. Bad stuff happened. And you know what, I’d love to forget it all, every last bit of it. But I don’t. Not ever. We got a strong introduction to both the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond last week, and this week we got to see more of the Doctor from Amy’s point of view. By now, the audience basically knows the Doctor’s history, and we see bits of Eleven’s personality taking over...
Continue reading...SEC Employees Fiddle With Themselves As Wall St. Burns
An internal audit of SEC employee computer use has uncovered some staggering details about exactly what employees and contractors were doing with their time and their laptops. The results: “During the past five years, the SEC OIG (Office of Inspector General) substantiated that 33 SEC employees and or contractors violated Commission rules and policies, as well as the government-wide Standards of Ethical Conduct, by viewing pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images using government computer resources and official time,” said a summary of the investigation by the inspector general’s office. The aerial view presented in the above...
Continue reading...No hipsters in China
China is the world’s largest bicycle market, where 51 million bikes were sold in 2009 alone, according to the China Bicycle Association. However, the world’s largest bicycle trend, fixed-gear bikes, or “fixies,” have been lagging in popularity. Actually, they’re basically non-existent. “Fixes,” so-called because they rely on only one fixed gear and the cyclist slows the bike by slowing their pedaling, were born from New York bike messengers, and have become a staple of urban bicycling almost everywhere; well, except China. They’re not nearly as functional as multi-gear bicycles (complete with brakes!), so many assume that a...
Continue reading...Doctor Who, "The Eleventh Hour"
“I’m the Doctor. I’m worse than everybody’s aunt…and that’s not how I’m introducing myself.” It took almost the full hour for me to adjust to the new Doctor Who, but it did happen. The episode opened with Eleven crashing to Earth in the TARDIS, and while it was an exciting opening shot, I wish they had backed up a few minutes to cover what happened during the final moments of “The End of Time,” because I am forgetful and easily confused, apparently. We also get new opening credits, theme song, title logo, and, as we see later,...
Continue reading...On party girls and the question of treatment or punishment
Twenty-year-old Laura Hall from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, has become the first woman—nay—person to be banned from drinking everywhere within England or Wales. Hall was issued a Drinking Banning Order, which restricts her from going into any bar, club, or any drinking establishment whatsoever. She’s also not allowed to buy adult beverages, carry unsealed containers containing such adult refreshment, or drink in public. She’s been convicted multiple times of drinking-related disturbances, as well as flouting previous bans on local drinking. The order to stop drinking, which also forces her to take a course to tackle her drinking problem,...
Continue reading...New Ways to Hate on Glenn Beck
Continuing on my poetry theme, I wanted to share this delightful recent discovery. As the friend who forwarded the website wrote, “poems, jewish stuff, making fun of glenn beck…I assume you were already aware?” I was not! According to their email blast, “Jewish Funds for Justice staged the Internet’s first “Twitterstorm” last week, flooding Glenn Beck’s Twitter account with some 3,000 haiku – Tweeted one by one, minute by minute – in support of social justice.” This was in response to Bleck’s (that was originally a typo, but on second thought seems apropos) tirade on churches that...
Continue reading...Romeo, Juliet, and Twitter. Wait…what?
Mudlark and the Royal Shakespeare Company have joined forces to present Such Tweet Sorrow, a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that takes place in real time on Twitter. Actors are given a scripted outline and character diaries, and they generate original tweets based on what the character would be thinking or feeling at any given moment. I assume that the goal of this project is to use social media to attract younger audiences, and I applaud them for that. If students become interested in Shakespeare after seeing these tweets and pick up a copy of Romeo...
Continue reading..."This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff."
In honor of the upcoming premiere of Doctor Who‘s fifth season (Saturday, April 17 @ 9PM on BBC America), I thought I’d up the nerd quotient on this blog with my first Arts & Culture post. I’m a fairly new fan of the show, and I must admit, I haven’t seen a single episode of the classic series, which ran from 1963 to 1989. What I’ve seen from the new series, however, is unlike any TV show we have in America. The story follows the Doctor, who is the only survivor of a race called the Time...
Continue reading...There will never be an Arrested Development movie and that is fine
So, it looks like there won’t be an Arrested Development movie after all. Co-star David Cross said in an interview: I think what I will tell you, it’s not going to happen. It’s not official, but I just don’t think it’s going to happen. Way too much time it’s been (since the show ended). I mean, there’s so many people involved. Everyone’s doing their own thing, you know. And everybody’s aged. It’s just not going to happen. I’m sure I speak for everybody when I say we’d love for it to happen, we’d love to work on...
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