BBC News => Man-sized sea scorpion claw found
8 foot long, eyes of blue… well, ok, probably didn’t have blue eyes. Just for clarity of that BBC headline, the scorpion is man-sized, not the claw.
The immense fossilised claw of a 2.5m-long (8ft) sea scorpion has been described by European researchers.
The 390-million-year-old specimen was found in a German quarry, the journal Biology Letters reports.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Paleontology, Science
The BBC has announced that this year’s Children in Need has taken in a record-breaking £19. That can’t be bad, can it?
As previously reported, much like two years ago, this year’s Children in Need featured a special mini Doctor Who episode.
Two years ago, the episode was a short post-regenerative sequence between David Tennant and Billie Piper that took place immediately prior to the events of The Christmas Invasion. This year’s mini-episode, Time Crash, inserted a few extra minutes into the concluding scenes of The Last of the Time Lords.
Synopsis
Martha Jones has just departed the TARDIS, and as the Doctor and his newly rebuilt TARDIS depart it experiences the titular time crash. As the Tenth Doctor frantically works his way around the TARDIS console trying to find out what happened, he bumps into the Fifth Doctor working his way around the opposite direction.
Two instances of the TARDIS have collided in time and space because the Tenth Doctor hadn’t fully completed his repairs of the TARDIS after the Master disassembled it. The two Time Lords trade a few barbed remarks, mostly the Tenth critiquing the Fifth and his wearing of a decorative vegetable, while the Fifth spends his time exasperated at this annoying “fan†who has somehow found his way into the TARDIS and has “…changed the desktop theme.†(Will that Joke still be funny when Microsoft Windows is just a stain on the Highway of Unpleasant Memories?)
When the Cloister Bell starts tolling, the Tenth Doctor leaps into action and saves the Universe, or at least a Belgium-sized part of it.
Catastrophe averted, the TARDISes begin to separate and the Fifth Doctor returns to his timeline, but not before the Tenth sums up his love for the old days and his old persona.
With a final warning from the Fifth Doctor about putting up his screens, the episode resumes the final scene from Last of the Time Lords by having the Titanic crash into the TARDIS console room.
Analysis
The are a whole raft of reasons why multi-Doctor stories generally fail. Most of them don’t bear mentioning here except for the “plot overload†aspect. In the Three Doctors and the Five Doctors, the circumstances that bring the Doctors together is a strained plot device that knocks the tried-and-true Doctor Who formula off its tracks.
In much the same way the early Davison years were hampered by too many companions vying for screen time, the Three Doctors and the (deceptively named) Five Doctors had (respectively) three and four lead characters vying for screen time. Ironically, the generally-abysmal Two Doctors is the better of the bunch because it brings together only two Doctors and because the circumstances of their meetings is both integral to the plot and not nearly so contrived as the other stories.
Time Crash can hardly be called an episode. It’s more of a brief vignette, and rather than involve a story, it just taps into the most popular aspect of multi-Doctor stories: the Doctors sniping at each other. This is always a fan favorite because it reflects the often possessive nature about fans’ choice of a favorite Doctor. That said, there’s a lot here to be recommend Time Crash.
One could almost picture David Tennant not being in the episode at all. Instead, it’s not at all hard to imagine writer Steven Moffat standing in Tennant’s place reciting all the lines. The whole thing feels rather like his tribute to a favorite Doctor and the continuity that they all represent. When the Tenth Doctor says to the fifth, “You were my Doctor!â€, I can see Moffat’s face regenerating over the top of Tennant’s.
It’s an enjoyable, nostalgic piece you watch for the witty dialogue and on that level, it doesn’t fail.
Much though I normally hate contrived plot-devices, sometimes they can be brilliant. Having the Doctor “regenerate†to cover the change in the lead actor was a brilliant piece of nonsense, but it works famously. Steven Moffat has come damn close by “…short[ing] out the time differential.†This plot contrivance allows Davison’s Doctor to look older than he did at the time of his regeneration into the Sixth Doctor. In just a couple sentences, the door is not only opened to potential future multi-Doctor stories featuring even more decrepit previous Doctors, but goes a long way towards explaining the past multi-Doctor stories, too.
A not-as-welcome plot contrivance was the return of Timey-wimey, Moffat’s non-explanation of related, linear temporal events spread over multiple timelines violating what would appear to be inviolable causality. It worked brilliantly in Blink, but could rapidly bring about enormously illogical plots or plot holes if not tightly reigned-in.
Case-in-point, in Time Crash, the Tenth Doctor brilliantly works out a way to save the day, but the Fifth Doctor recognizes that even he isn’t brilliant enough to have worked out that risky solution in the time available. The explanation: The Fifth Doctor saw the Tenth save the day and remembered it. Now, as the Tenth, he remembers seeing himself saving the day in exactly that fashion, ergo, no one ever actually worked out how to save the day. That only works in timey-wimey world. But does timey-wimey work when the Fifth Doctor seems to know about Linda and her Doctor fans yet the Tenth Doctor didn’t seem to know about them when he met them? Or does it just make your head hurt like it does mine?
Still, I didn’t have high-hopes for Time Crash, but in the end, I enjoyed it immensely. I hope they don’t forget about it when the DVDs are released.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who, Review, Television, UK, Video
I haven’t had much to post lately, so I thought I’d post something to complain on behalf of my neighbors down the street. Oh, they don’t know I’m complaining on their behalf, to be sure, this is just my civic mindedness kicking in.
Personally, I subscribe to the eco-friendly concept of zeroscaping.
Lawns are an abomination against nature in the desert – and don’t get me started about golf courses. Nonetheless, I can appreciate the time, effort and expense involved in maintaining a nice yard. Why, just last week, my neighbor’s entire family was out in the yard, cutting the grass, pulling the weeds, trimming the trees (and putting up xmas lights weeks too early.)
They timed it, I suspect, to coincide with “big trash collectionâ€, that quarterly event where the City of Phoenix deigns to pick up garbage bigger than one container. Over a one-week period, everyone is supposed to pill their large trash (often tree branches and other construction debris) at the front of their property (not blocking the sidewalk) and they’ll come and get it.
The City also thoughtfully uses a small front loader to scrape up the trash and put it in the truck. The results can be seen here, where they’ve completely removed the turf from the ground.
Way to go Phoenix! We love you, too.
My daughter is in a sports club after school. Each month, they play a different game.
Last month it was basketball. At the end of the month, they had a big game on Saturday. Actually, it was more of a very informal tournament. To my knowledge there were no winners, but several schools came together and played each other in a series of 5 minute games.
I’ll spare myself a bit of agony and not go over the basketball game in any detail, save to say that Michelle wasn’t the most accomplished player on the court, although she did have a remarkable talent for looking every direction except where the ball was and she managed to practice her handstands without seemingly being bothered by the other kids running all around her trying to play basketball.
This month it was kickball and, while I was prepared for more of last month, I was pleasantly surprised. Michelle was running hard, trying to catch and kick the ball, she scored several runs (including one home run) and got a couple players out.
She’s a little too small to have a powerful kick and, for some reason, she was kicking with her right foot, which, since she is left-handed, I assume is probably as awkward as if I tried kicking with my left.
This month, as with last, I was still amazed at how many kids didn’t seem to have a clue what they were doing. Despite having (supposedly) played kickball for a month, several of the kids didn’t seem to realize you had to run from one base to the next when someone kicks the ball. There were several instances where kids were tagged out because there were two people standing on the same base.
Not Michelle, though, she never made a tactical or rule error that I noticed. I’m really quite proud of her. She even stood up to bigger kids who were trying to hog the ball. In the first game, there was some kid on her team who was trying to hold the ball all the time, even if it meant taking it from other kids on his team. (Seen in this picture heading for Michelle to get the ball, but she ran around him with it instead.) You’re not usually supposed to have to work against your own teammates, too.
They didn’t have kickball, that I can recall, back when I was in elementary school. My first recollection of it is from Junior High. I can see how it would make a good substitute for baseball, suitable for younger kids. We enjoyed the game because you could bean the runners with the ball, if your aim was good enough, which made it a game of suitable violence for us – rather like a combination of baseball, soccer and dodgeball. There wasn’t much of that in evidence at this game, although Michelle did take one to the face while trying to field the ball.
Seeing as how baseball has been adapted, I wonder if Cricket could be similarly adapted. Kicket anyone?
Check out the gallery of pictures of the new Sontarans.
Looks like another faithful updating of a classic old foe.
Oh, and you read about them, too.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who
Plowing through the support forums, I can tell I’m not the only one having problems with this.
I have about 8 e-mail addresses in Mail. 5 of them are IMAP (4 from hosted domains, 1 from .MAC) and 3 are POP accounts. Since the upgrade, there’s been a slow and steady wasting and now, finally, completely death of my IMAP accounts. On the first day or so, everything worked fine, then I began experiencing painful delays sending and receiving, finally complete time-outs and now, nothing at all. (The .MAC IMAP account still works fine.)
What’s weirder, Mail seems to be reconfiguring my IMAP settings on the fly. The port numbers are different almost every time I go in the settings.
Using the one remaining computer that I haven’t upgraded to Leopard, everything still works fine.
I hope they fix this soon. I don’t like having to use Thunderbird for my e-mail. (Which also works just fine.)
Following up on my previous article about good stuff, here’s a negative.
Periodically, when using Coverflow mode in the new Finder, this is what happens. First I notice my fans starting the rev up, then the system begins to bog down.
It appears Finder might have a problem… Activity monitor shows Finder running between 100% and 180% CPU utilization.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, MacBook, OSX, Technology
I’ve been slowly working through our “family pack†updates to Leopard this week and realized a couple things that I hadn’t heard anybody mention yet
Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, OSX, Technology
If you had any doubts as to how far out nowhere the new Apple store is, take a look at the corner it sits on.
This picture is Williams Field Rd and SanTan Village Parkway, looking at the northwest corner. SanTan Village is the northeast corner.
Yes, that’s a big pile of hay.
What’s on my iTunes right now?
Main Theme From The Saint from the album “Music From The TV Series The Saint†by Edwin Astley
With all the excitement of Leopard this weekend, it’s easy to gloss over the other important event – the opening of a new Apple store just a scant 36 miles from my home.
36 miles from your home, you say? Surely that’s out in the middle of nowhere!? You’re right, it is. The trouble is, these days, lots of people live in the middle of nowhere. They’ve ruined nowhere for the rest of us. Since nowhere has been ruined, we might as well look for the silver lining, and that lining would be the Apple store.
This store follows the new trend, the elimination of cash registers. All transactions are processed on small hand-held devices and the receipt is e-mailed to you. I think they piloted this either last year or the year before at Christmas time and the iPod express table. I’ve also noticed lately that they use this technique when the line to check out is getting long.
Apparently the in-store testing has been successful enough that not only is this new store devoid of any visible registers, but they told me they’d be redoing the other two stores in Phoenix soon as well.
Darn clever of them. You talk to an associate, you’ve decided you’re going to take it and he whips out his portable register and you’re paid for and gone. Conversely, if you want to buy something, you have to get the attention of an associate.
I think maybe the associate I spoke with wasn’t the most knowledgeable, but he was friendly and efficient. I asked him about Leopard’s lack of Classic mode.
“Yes, that’s right,†he said.
“So, that means any of the programs over there that have minimum requirements of System 7, 8 or 9 probably use Classic, and therefore won’t work under Leopard.â€
“No, not really,†he says, “most programs are dual binary.â€
BZZZZT. Wrong answer, I do believe. Dual binary deals with PowerPC/Intel programming, but anything that runs under System 9 or less must be a classic-style program.
I’m surprised Apple didn’t yank them off the shelves, or at least put them in a “Does not run under Leopard†shelf.
I spoke to a couple of the people standing at the front door, greeting people. They said last night at the grand opening and Leopard release they did have over a thousand people. I assume they knew that because they ran out of shirts. Today, the store seemed to be having a steady load of visitors.
This weekend was also the grand opening of SanTan Village which is very large, yet quite strange indeed. I don’t think I like the idea of a shopping plaza with parking right up to the stores. Perhaps they’re trying to reinvent the High Street concept.
What’s on my iTunes right now?
Boat Chase from the album “Live And Let Die†by George Martin
Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, OSX, Technology