- Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?
Presented with identical summaries of the accomplishments of two imaginary applicants, professors at six major research institutions were significantly more willing to offer the man a job. If they did hire the woman, they set her salary, on average, nearly $4,000 lower than the man’s.
- The Devil’s Crown (BBC 1978)
All 13 episodes!!!!!
- What Lies Ahead for Azerbaijan?
More of the same, or possibly worse, alas.
- The 13 reasons Washington is failing
Difficult to disagree…
- Independent Diplomat: The World’s First Diplomatic Advisory Group
What we do.
- Western Sahara (Channel 4 News)
With Javier Bardem.
- The EU’s Unavoidable Challenge of Legitimacy
Great analysis from Richard Youngs. #fb
Monthly Archives: October 2013
50 years of Who: 1974
1974:
TV
The Time Warrior (last episode)
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
Death to the Daleks
The Monster of Peladon
Planet of the Spiders
Robot (first epsiode)
Books
Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (3)
Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters (3)
Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon (3)
Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks (3)
Doctor Who and the Dæmons (3)
Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils (3)
Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen (2)
1975 Doctor Who Annual (3)
The first Who from 1974 that I encountered: We lived outside the UK for much of 1974, and I’m pretty sure I saw only the last episode of Robot, so my first 1974 Who was probably Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion. This was the last year for some time that I did not see any episodes of Who on first broadcast.
My favourite Who from 1974: This really isn’t my favourite era of the TV series, whereas several of these early novelisations are very good indeed. If I had to pick one it might be Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks.
Moving swiftly on from: The dinosaurs.
So, what was your favourite of the above? What is the best bit? (And if you like, what is the worst bit?)
October Books 5) Catastrophea, by Terrance Dicks
The Doctor smiled. ‘Perhaps not. But it’s an interesting spot all the same. A small colonial city in a state of extreme tension. Oppressed native population, arrogant colonists, uniformed guards – probably some kind of private security force, attached to some big corporation. A military presence as well. Plus a lot of very hard-bitten visitors from off-planet. Something here must be very valuable indeed.’
This is the sixth book by Terrance Dicks that I have read this year, and possibly the 82nd I have read in my life. (I think I have only the Fifth Doctor novel Warmonger and the Benny novel Mean Streets to go, of his contributions to the major Who and spinoff lines.) I can't match Phil Sandifer's eloquence, or Andrew Hickey, or indeed Tat Wood in his essay accompanying The Long Game in the lastest About Time volume; but I too owe a lot of my ability to imagine other places, other times, and most importantly other people's points of view to Terrance Dicks' clear and simple prose; and it's worth taking a moment to say that of an author in his late 70s.
Now, to the meat. Catastrophea is a fascinating engagement with colonialism. Sure, the plot is fairly obvious – the eponymous planet is at the cutting edge of a spheres-of-influence power struggle between humans and Draconians, with the drugged and oppressed natives showing worrying signs of being uppity. Under Dicks' script editorship, Old Who tried similar stories a couple of times with mixed, which is to say poor, results – Colony in Space and The Mutants being the most obvious such stories. Catastrophea, a Third Doctor/Jo novel,which is feels a bit like reparation: the human colonial adminsitrators, though well-intentioned by their own merits, are clearly Wrong; the Draconians have their own complex internal politics to deal with and are equally clearly Wrong; the native People are ready to retake power once the colonially imposed barriers have been removed, with the Doctor's assistance. There's a certain amount of cliché – and Dicks acknowledges this with an amusing riff on Casablanca in chapter five – but the book's heart is in the right pace, and at the end the invaders all leave, the planet having been restored to its rightful inhabitants, thanks to their own efforts, the Doctor's help, and a Gollum-like intervention by one of the nastier humans. A very interesting Who novel for all kinds of reasons.
50 years of Who: 1973
1973:
TV
The Three Doctors (last 3 episodes)
Carnival of Monsters
Frontier in Space
Planet of the Daleks
The Green Death
The Time Warrior (first 3 episodes)
Book
1974 Doctor Who Annual (3)
The first Who from 1973 that I encountered: My first definite memory of watching Who when it was first broadcast is Frontier in Space, specifically the last two episodes; I remember the Doctor’s confrontation with the Draconian emperor, and very distinctly recall the Master announcing that he had brought some old friends (ie the Daleks) to greet the Doctor. I was 6.
My favourite Who from 1973: That moment at the end of episode 3 of The Green Death when the maggot is poised to attack poor Jo!
Moving swiftly on from: None of this is awful, but Planet of the Daleks does drag a bit.
50 years of Who: 1972
1972:
TV
Day of the Daleks
The Curse of Peladon
The Sea Devils
The Mutants
The Time Monster
The Three Doctors (first episode)
Book
1973 Doctor Who Annual (3)
The first Who from 1972 that I encountered: I am not completely certain if I saw any of the episodes at the time; this was the year I turned 5. The Three Doctors, whose first episode was shown on 30 December, was repeated in 1981 as part of the Five Faces of Doctor Who season. I was 14 then.
My favourite Who from 1972: I really like The Curse of Peladon, an attempt to get political that rather bravely misfires.
Moving swiftly on from: The Mutants, where the best bit is the scenery of the location filming, and the second best bit is Geoffrey Palmer (killed in the first episode)
So, what was your favourite of the above? What is the best bit? (And if you like, what is the worst bit?)
October Books 4) The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
It looked as if someone had cut a patch out of the air, about two metres from the edge of the road, a patch roughly square in shape and less than a metre across. If you were level with the patch so that it was edge-on, it was nearly invisible, and it was completely invisible from behind. You could only see it from the side nearest the road, and you couldn’t see it easily even from there, because all you could see through it was exactly the same kind of thing that lay in front of it on this side: a patch of grass lit by a street light.
But Will knew without the slightest doubt that that patch on the other side was in a different world.
I promised after re-reading the first of these that I would get to the second in a couple of months; that was over three years ago. The good thing about this volume is that what had appeared to be entirely a parallel world now turns out to be linkable to our own, from which Will joins the adventure; and there’s lots more gutwrenching stuff about parents and children, and treacherous magicians and well-intentioned scientists. But I do agree that it’s a huge shame that Lyra, so much the central character of the first book, has her agency largely removed in this one, and there’s a real middle-volume-of-the-trilogy feeling about it.
October Books 3) The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski, by Samantha Geimer
Roman Polanski’s arrest was, in a sense, my arrest. Because I am that thirteen-year-old girl.
Oh for God’s sakes, it’s all such ancient history, you might say. After all, it’s 2013: he’s eighty, I’m fifty. He is one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the world. I have a great husband, great kids, a great life. What do his problems, at this point, have to do with me?
Well, nothing. And everything.
I picked this up after a Twitter debate initiated by @EyeEdinburgh last weekend, in order to educate myself about this particular notorious case. It's a lucid and short book, where Samantha Geimer recounts the story of how Roman Polanski drugged and raped her at Jack Nicholson’s house one evening in 1977, and her life before and after, particularly the subsequent legal battle (which she blames largely on the media-driven mentality of the judge in the case; Polanski was willing to settle on the terms agreed by her and her family). Judith Newman, her ghost-writer, has done a fantastic job of conveying Geimer's voice, and gets a deserved namecheck at the end.
I should say that I have not seen a single minute of any of Polanski's films, so I read it very much as a generic account of what happens when a famous man does a monstrous thing, rather than with any particular views on his gifts or otherwise as an artist. (On his artistic credentials, the point that struck me from the narrative was this: when he brought Samantha home after his assault, the point at which her mother and step-father smelt a rat was when he showed them the photographs he had been taking of her – they simply weren't very good.) One cannot help but be struck by the similarity of the arguments used on Polanski's behalf at the time to those used last year by apologists for Julian Assange, or by Dominique Strauss-Kahn's lawyers the year before. Nothing much has changed since 1977.
On a much more trivial topic, it's very irritating that if @EyeEdinburgh comments here using her Twitter account, she will get a nice Twitter userhead beside her username, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way for me to refer to her in that way in the body of the post. Dreamwidth brought in the <user name=EyeEdinburgh site=twitter.com> code several years ago; if LJ have followed suit, I haven't seen it and can't find it in the FAQ.
October Books 2) Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
The family of UM 006 does not know what happened to him this evening. They know only that he donated his remains for use in medical education or research.
Having read Mary Roach’s books on sex and space, I was looking forward to reading her book about death, which is after all the one thing that will happen to all of us. In the end I found it a little disappointing; it was her first book, and the compassionate, witty but explicit style which makes her more recent books so successful is less well developed here. And in the end it’s just a series of stories about scientists working on things that used to be (parts of) people, and the story is very much focussed on the scientists rather than their subjects. Yes, there’s a considerable squick factor in a lot of it; this is all very sensitive stuff. But it didn’t light up for me as I had hoped. I guess that corpses are simply not very entertaining, which is as it should be.
One rather grim point arising: it’s never too early to think about organ donation. Here in Belgium we have presumed consent
October Books 1) A Book of Silence, by Sarah Maitland
I was falling in love with silence. Like most people with a new love, I became increasingly obsessed by it – wanting to know more, to go further, to understand better.
I think that a lot of us would like a quieter life. Sarah Maitland is fortunate enough to have been able to find one, and in this memoir she chronicles her own quest for a silent space for reflection, with many reflections on the historical and religious precedents. I realised that my own cultural associations with silence, having been educated at a convent grammar school, are on the whole more positive than those of many native English speakers; Gibbon has a lot to answer for, in that by demonising monks he also demonised the contemplative life. On the other hand, the one time I attended a Quaker meeting I felt very uncomfortable.
I was particularly fascinated by the awful story of the 1968-69 Golden Globe Race, in which one contestant decided not to finish the race but to just keep on sailing, and another, knowing that he was failing, faked his log books and took his own life. Sometimes when social distractions have been removed, we find that our priorities get drastically reordered; and sometimes we can’t deal with the results.
50 years of Who: 1971
1971:
TV
Terror of the Autons
The Mind of Evil
The Claws of Axos
Colony in Space
The Dæmons
(This is the only year since 1964 in which no new Doctor Who book was published, not even an annual.)
The first Who from 1971 that I encountered: My first contemporaneous memory of Who is not from any of the the usual media: I clearly recall the great Sugar Smacks promotion of 1971 (I would have been 4). The first TV story from this year that I watched was Terror of the Autons, fairly late into my post-2005 catchup.
My favourite Who from 1971: Terror of the Autons, because of the introduction of the Master and Jo (and to a lesser extent Mike). I know this is slightly heresy; there’s a good case also for The Dæmons.
Moving swiftly on from: Pigbin Josh.
So, what was your favourite of the above? What is the best bit? (And if you like, what is the worst bit?)
September Books 19) Shroud of Sorrow, by Tommy Donbavand
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, indicating the date at the top of the page. ‘It’s 23 November 1963. We’re in Dallas, Texas – the day after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.’
This is the third of the three Eleventh Doctor novels published this year, and the first one to feature Clara – it may at this rate turn out to be the only Eleven/Clara novel, depending on the BBC’s publication plans for the rest of the year. It’s not the only story to be set on 23 November 1963, but it’s also not the worst, using the backdrop of Kennedy’s death for an alien being that feeds off sorrow, with some nice descriptive moments and considerable continuity service. It will set the scene nicely for younger readers wanting to sense the history of the show in advance of next month’s celebrations.
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Having wrapped up Torchwood a few weeks back, I've now reached the end of The Sarah Jane Adventures in my New Who rewatch. I had previously seen only the first two and a half of the five series, plus the Matt Smith episode, so a fair bit of it was new to me. I strongly recommend them all; in a previous discussion the view was expressed that there is one episode that is a bit duff, but I actually enjoyed it, and Suranne Jones, guesting as the Mona Lisa, is clearly trying out for her role as the incarnate Tardis a few months later.
In particular, I want to single out the fourth season as a moment when the show really does hit the right note every time. This is the season that includes the Old Who meets New Who Death of the Doctor (watch it yourself – Part 1, Part 2), Katy Manning returning as Jo Grant (now Jo Jones, of course), Finn "Loras Tyrell" Jones as her grandson, and David "William Hartnell" Bradley as an evil vulture alien. There's a view that Matt Smith is at his absolute best in this story; he's certainly at the top of his game, and everyone is brilliant.
Without being too snarky, one of the strengths of Season 4 is that Tommy Knight, who plays Sarah Jane's adopted son Luke and is frankly the weakest of the regular cast, gets shuffled off to Oxford in the first episode and appears only occasionally thereafter, leaving the field to the much stronger Daniel Anthony as Clyde and Anjli Mohindra as Rani, plus of course Lis Sladen herself as our heroine. I still miss Yasmine Paige, who played Maria in the first series, but it's a strong line-up. The fifth and sadly truncated final season brings in twelve-year-old Sinead Michael as another human child created by aliens, adopted by Sarah, and she shows promise; though the best story of the three is the middle one, The Curse of Clyde Langer, where poor Clyde finds that he is rejected by everyone, a brilliant evocation of teenage isolation. (NB that Clyde's mother is played by an actress only eight years older than the cherubic Daniel Anthony.)
It's a shame that the Sarah Jane Adventures never quite got the wider fandom traction that Torchwood did – and I include myself in that criticism, having watched only a few more than half of the stories first time round. They do catch the sense of adventure of Old Who well, and they are comfortingly familiar in format for us old school fans, with roughly half-hour episodes and cliff-hangers. And they remind us old 'uns that we were right about Lis Sladen and Sarah Jane back in the 1970s, when so much else has changed since.
Where might we have gone? Luke was gayAce would have reappearedthe giant spiders were toyed with but discarded.
While we're on the subject, I also want to praise the ten Sarah Jane audiobooks, which are surely the only range of Who spinoff audios which made it into double figures without a single duff entry. Eight of the ten were read by Elisabeth Sladen, the last two by Daniel Anthony and Anjli Mohindra. They're a great way of passing a CD-length of time, especially with fans or potential fans of the appropriate age group.
I'll leave you with the last minute of the last episode broadcast during Elisabeth Sladen's lifetime. You may find you have something in your eye at the end.
50 years of Who: 1970
1970:
TV
Spearhead from Space
Doctor Who and the Silurians
The Ambassadors of Death
Inferno
Book
1971 Doctor Who Annual (3)
The first Who from 1970 that I encountered: I watched Spearhead from Space in 2006, quite early on in my rediscovery of old Who.
My favourite Who from 1970: Of the four stories, I do think that Spearhead from Space stands out – it looks different due to being entirely on film, we have the Brigadier at his freshest, we have Liz used well, and we don’t have too much Pertwee. But I also want to shout out for the 1971 Annual, which is one of the best of that particular range.
Moving swiftly on from: Actually none of this is terrible. I think the plot in all three seven-parters rambles a bit, and I’m not a fan of the carefully choreographed fight scenes – not that I think they are bad, it’s just not my thing.
So, what was your favourite of the above? What is the best bit? (And if you like, what is the worst bit?)
[LOCKED POST] an email exchange with Nigel Farage’s office, two years ago today
From: [my assistant]
Sent: 04 October 2011 16:31
To: FARAGE Nigel
Cc: Nicholas Whyte
Subject: Meeting request with Dr. Nicholas Whyte and Mr. B
Dear Mr Farage,
On behalf of the Brussels office of [work], I would like to request a meeting with you for Dr. Nicholas Whyte and Mr. B, Representative of [client] to Europe, regarding [EU thing which we opposed]. Would it be possible to meet with you this or next week?
Thank you.
Kind regards,
[my assistant]
——————————–
From: FARAGE Nigel
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 4:52 PM
To: [my assistant]
Subject: RE: Meeting request with Dr. Nicholas Whyte and Mr. B
Dear [assistant]
Thank you for your esteemed request.
However, it is not within Mr Farage’s remit to represent the EU, or its pseudo-parliament, by engaging with any Mission accredited to the EU. He represents the UK Independence Party (independence, that is, from the EU) and the voters of the UK, who support the UKIP’s anti-EU manifesto.
Moreover, if the [client] seeks only to persuade Mr Farage that the EU’s proposed [thing which we opposed] is illegitimate and undesirable, it need not trouble itself to meet him on that account. Mr Farage opposes all of the agreements the EU makes, over the head of the UK’s democratically elected government, with any other party whatsoever.
On this account, Mr Farage – and all UKIP-members of the EU’s pseudo-parliament – have voted, and will continue to vote, against the [thing which we opposed].
His time is also very precious. He does not engage in diplomatic small-talk. Is there anything else to be discussed?
Yours sincerely
Andrew S. Reed
Office of Nigel Farage, Brussels
www.ukip.org www.ukipmeps.org www.express.co.uk
50 years of Who: 1969
1969:
TV
The Krotons (last 3 episodes)
The Seeds of Death
The Space Pirates
The War Games
Book
1970 Doctor Who Annual (2)
The first Who from 1969 that I encountered: Again, thanks to the Five Faces of Doctor Who, I saw The Krotons in 1981, after that, I think I saw a video of The Seeds of Death at some point in the wilderness years.
My favourite Who from 1969: Probably my biggest single nomination of this category is for all ten episodes of The War Games. The key moment is at the end of episode 4, when the Doctor recognises the War Chief…
Moving swiftly on from: The As-you-know-Bob scene in The Space Pirates,
So, what was your favourite of the above? What is the best bit? (And if you like, what is the worst bit?)
September Books
Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing, by Katherine Ashenburg
The Theology of the Gospel of Mark, by W.R. Telford
Who and Me, by Barry Letts
Strengths Finder 2.0, by Tom Rath
Poetry 1
Meeting the British, by Paul Muldoon
Fiction (non-sf) 4 (YTD 34)
The Body In The Library, by Agatha Christie
A Murder Is Announced, by Agatha Christie
Evil under the Sun, by Agatha Christie
Home Truths, by Freya North
SF (non-Who) 3 (YTD 50)
Royal Assassin, by Robin Hobb
The Queen’s Bastard, by C.E. Murphy
The Moment of Eclipse, by Brian W. Aldiss
Doctor Who 5 (YTD 47)
The Suns of Caresh, by Paul Saint
Just War, by Lance Parkin
The Year of Intelligent Tigers, by Kate Orman
The Beast of Babylon, by Charlie Higson
Shroud of Sorrow, by Tommy Donbavand
Comics 2 (YTD 24)
The Books of Magic, by Neil Gaiman
The Castafiore Emerald, by Hergé
~5,200 pages (YTD 49,900)
7/19 (YTD 58/191) by women (3xChristie, North, Hobb, Murphy, Orman)
0/19 (YTD 8/191) by PoC
Rereads: A Murder is Announced, The Moment of Eclipse, The Year of Intelligent Tigers, The Books of Magic, The Castafiore Emerald – 5 (YTD 15)
Acquired 2011 or before: 10 (YTD 69) – Gospel of Mark, The Year of the Intelligent Tigers, The Queen’s Bastard, The Moment of Eclipse, Clean, Just War, The Suns of Caresh, Home Truths, The Castafiore Emerald, The Books of Magic
Acquired 2012: 0 (YTD 25)
Acquired 2013: 9 (YTD 97) – Royal Assassin, Shroud of Sorrow, The Body in the Library, A Murder is Announced, Evil Under the Sun, Meeting the British, Who And Me, The Beast of Babylon, Strengthsfinder 2.0
Reading now:
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
A Book of Silence, by Sara Maitland
The Girl, by Samantha Geiner
Coming next, perhaps
The Far Side Of The World, by Patrick O’Brian
Streetlethal, by Steven Barnes
The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber
The Flood, by Ian Rankin
The Last Mughal, by William Dalrymple
The History of the Hobbit vol 2: Return to Bag-End, by John Rateliff
The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I, by Stephen Alford
Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea
Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman
Reamde, by Neal Stephenson
Isaac Asimov: A Life of the Grand Master of Science Fiction, by Michael White
Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett
There Will be Time, by Poul Anderson
The Wise Man’s Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss
Guns, germs, and steel, by Jared Diamond
Eyeless in Gaza, by Aldous Huxley
[Doctor Who] Catastrophea, by Terrance Dicks
[Doctor Who] Warchild, by Andrew Cartmel
[Doctor Who] Slow Empire, by Dave Stone
[Doctor Who] The Spaceship Graveyard, by Colin Brake
50 years of Who: 1968
1968:
TV
The Enemy of the World (last 5 episodes)
The Web of Fear
Fury from the Deep
The Wheel in Space
The Dominators
The Mind Robber
The Invasion
The Krotons (first episode)
Book
1969 Doctor Who Annual (2)
The first Who from 1968 that I encountered: Thanks to the Five Faces of Doctor Who, I saw The Krotons in 1981, long before I saw any of the other Troughton stories; it wasn’t a great start! Rather oddly I picked up an audio of the first episode of Fury from the Deep in 2005, a freebie from SFX I think (probably the last time I bought SFX).
My favourite Who from 1968: That first episode of The Mind Robber is utterly bonkers, and quite incredible.
Moving swiftly on from: The Dominators.
So, what was your favourite of the above? What is the best bit? (And if you like, what is the worst bit?)