bunsen_h

When I saw this product at the grocery store...



"Made with Fairy Dust and Princess Kisses" ...

... my immediate thought was of the monstrous working conditions.  Slave labour camps for the princesses and fairies, assuming that the fairies aren't incorporated directly into the product.  Princesses in agony from being forced to pucker for hours on end.

Perhaps someone could do a movie about their liberation.

Imagine slightly-jerky hand-drawn animation, a bit like Bill Plimpton's stuff or a certain series of TV commercials...

We see a young woman at a desk, obviously trying to study but fighting off exhaustion.  There's a stack of books; if one's TV resolution is good enough one can see titles/authors such as "GRAY", "KNUTH 5", "Ψ₀ ∴ ∄ m "^*, "ORG CHEM", "ULYSSES".

The woman slumps, then jerks awake.  She shakes her head, reaches into a desk drawer, pulls out a blue-and-white can, pulls its tab, and chugs its contents.  She puts the empty can down, then her eyes widen.  She breathes heavily, gasps, clutches at her chest for a few seconds -- we can see her heart pounding.  Books are knocked off the desk; her chair is thrown backwards; she falls to the floor.  After a last convulsion, her body lies still.  Then an angelic form, with wings and halo, rises from her body and flies upwards out of view; a couple of the books snap after her, alligator-like.

Voice-over: "Dead Bull gives you wi-ings!"

---

^* "Sigh not so, but let 'em go" -- apparently a treatise on the wavefunction calculations encrypted in Shakespeare's plays. Much Ado About Nothing is one of several plays written not by Shakespeare but by a genius mathematician of the same name.
 

The upcoming movie Noah seems to have more magic in it than one might have expected.  Someone plunges a wooden rod into the ground, unleashing a spreading ring of fire; stuff like that.  Some miraculous stuff is part of the story, of course; we see snakes and birds and animals streaming toward the ark.  And falling fireballs and gigantic geysers, which I think were not in the original story, but my knowledge of it is spotty.

Modern effects technology could do something towards explaining some of the long-standing mysteries.  All of the animals going into the ark could be seen to shrink as they enter, so there would be space for all of them.  They wouldn't even have to explain it, just show it.  Emma Watson's role in the movie might lend credence to the effect.

Really, there should be a Doctor Who episode which shows him going back to help Noah.  He could either apply some transdimensional technology, or just... well, there's lots of room inside the TARDIS.
 

The assumptions built into the recent Doctor Who stories, and the emotional buildups followed by the goofy hack resolutions, continue to annoy me.

There's a Fixed Point In Time based on the Doctor being observed to die... ooh, the angst... then it turns out that the paradox can be resolved by a look-alike.

There's a Fixed Point In Time based on the Doctor and TARDIS being unable to visit New York at such-and-such a date to see Amy and Rory... ooh, the angst... but they blithely skip past the possibility of him traveling to some other city, waiting a bit, and taking a train.

( Spoiled warning for "The Name of the Doctor" )

This running gag of Clara being "The Impossible Girl" was just silly.  In this context, as in so many others, "impossible" merely means "I haven't figured out the trick yet."  Considering how many times the universe has been rebooted with the guiding influence of someone associated with the Doctor, "impossible" is a word that he shouldn't be using.  (By now, he should also be avoiding the phrase "I promise", especially in a sentence like "I promise that you'll be safe" or "I promise I'll protect you.")
 

Clint Eastwood, yes... but what about Naomi?
 

thnidu has graciously corrected my grammar: the phrase I want is "Per coitum ad coronam".  Not "Per copula ad corona" as I'd originally coined it.  I think my original version flows better and is more clearly playing off the "per ardua ad astra" motto, but it's important to communicate correctly.
 

MSN headline: "Stars that died in 2008".

I'm sure it says something about me that my first reaction was "... But we won't even know until the light gets here, and that'll take years."

From the CBC: "Bell Canada Inc. is not breaking any laws by slowing internet speeds and will be allowed to continue throttling its customers, the CRTC has ruled."

Yeah, Bell's treatment of its customers has been pretty poor.  I didn't know they were being that violent.  My problems have generally been limited to always having my service questions routed to illiterate idiots in India.

The history books relate that in 1752, postmaster and natural philosopher Ben Franklin was performing his experiments with a kite in a thunderstorm, demonstrating that lightning was electrical in nature.

The serious history books are careful to point out that Franklin was only generating sparks, and couldn't actually have been struck by lightning -- after all, he would hardly have been likely to have continued his busy career if he had.

This demonstrates one of the limitations of serious history books.  They also don't mention the persistent later rumours of a mysterious sorcerous figure flying around in thunderstorms, hurling small lightning bolts and pithy epigrams at the homes of owners of vicious dogs.

-- from The Secret Origins of the Freedom Fighters of America

I could have sworn that there was a scene in the Trek Classic episode "Obsession" in which we got to see people firing phasers into the vampire gas cloud as it was attacking guys in red shirts.  It turns out that this isn't the case.  I had to settle for a less dramatic image.