Tue, 20:48: RT @BrigidLaffan: In this piece, I argue that EU emerged stronger from #Brexit. Brexit has enabled the EU to reveal its essential essence v…
Tue, 23:58: RT @OxfordDiplomat: Go EU Diplomacy “U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cancelled his Europe trip at the last minute on Tuesday after…
Wed, 05:30: RT @sahilkapur: House votes 223-205 to call on @VP Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Trump. This won’t have any prac…
Wed, 10:45: The World’s Oldest Story? Astronomers Say Global Myths About ‘Seven Sisters’ Stars May Reach Back 100,000 Years https://t.co/kQaEM6Gi4H Wow.
13 January 1923: birth of Jack Watling, who played Professor Travers in The Abominable Snowmen (Second Doctor, 1967), The Web of Fear (Second Doctor, 1968) and Downtime (unofficial, 1995).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
13 January 1968: broadcast of fourth episode of The Enemy of the World. The Doctor and friends escape Salamander's base, at the cost of Fariah's life. Salamander visits the underground base where he has imprisoned his scientists.
13 January 1973: broadcast of third episode of The Three Doctors.The Second and Third Doctors confront Omega, and discover that his physical body has been destroyed.
13 January 1979: broadcast of fourth episode of The Power of Kroll. The Doctor realises that the fifth segment is part of Kroll, and retrieves it, destroying the giant creature; most of the miners are killed and the Swampies survive.
13 January 1984: broadcast of fourth episode of Warriors of the Deep. The Doctor regretfully wipes out the reptiles with Hexachromite gas. "There should have been another way."
iii) date specified in canon
13 January 1213: On the 13th day of the 13th year of the 13th century, on the 13th moon of the 13th planet of the 13th galaxy, the Doctor and Rose encounter the Triskaidekaphobes (in the September 2006 Doctor Who Adventures strip, "Triskaidekaphobia" by the ever excellent Alan Barnes).
(Accidentally posted in draft form yesterday – this is the real thing.)
Second paragraph of third chapter:
"Good afternoon, honourable students."
When I first read this the year it was a Hugo finalist (2010), I wrote:
didn't really grab me I'm afraid. It is a tale of time police and overlapping universes and histories, broken up by some reflections on the evolution of the solar system presented in rather odd powerpoint format. I wasn't really convinced either by the astronomy or the mathematics of deep time, and they appeared to be the point of the story.
On the other hand, the story does get my approval for being the only one presented to Hugo voters in a format that my handheld can read without a conversion process.
I should note that despite my ranking it sixth, it actually won the award, proving once again that my tastes do not always align with those of Hugo voters. I voted for the Scalzi story, which lost by 11 votes.
Rereading it ten years on, I’m again struck by how different it is from most of the author’s usual work (and usually I like Stross’s work much more than Scalzi’s). I think I am more sympathetic now, though. It’s a real Big Picture story, packed into a few dozen pages, with a grand sweep of time-manipulating narrative but characters who are pretty human. You can get it here.
This was (I thought) my top unread book acquired in 2014 (directly from the author, I think – my copy is signed), but it turned out I had read it before. Next on that pile is Symbiont, by "Mira Grant".
Mon, 18:54: RT @its_johnmartin: THREAD My wife is crying with frustration. She manages a supermarket that gets about 16,000 customers a week. About 160…
Mon, 21:22: RT @apcoworldwide: .@MargeryKraus, founder and executive chairman of APCO Worldwide, reflects and shares her thoughts on the January 6, 202…
Tue, 09:53: RT @astroehlein: Republicans: Sure our people just tried to overturn a democratic election using deadly violence, but why are Democrats try…
12 January 1974: broadcast of first episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, billed simply as Invasion. The Doctor and Sarah land in a deserted London under martial law, and are attacked by first a pterodactyl and then a tyrannosaurus rex.
12 January 1980: broadcast of fourth episode of The Horns of Nimon, ending Season 17 prematurely. K9 rescues the hostages and the Doctor and Romana blow up the Nimons' complex.
12 January 1982: broadcast of fourth episode of Castrovalva. The Portreeve turns out to be the Master, and the whole of Castrovalva based on Adric's computations. The Doctor rescues Adric and leaves Castrovalva to fold in on itself, trapping the Master.
12 January 1983: broadcast of fourth episode of Arc of Infinity. Omega attempts to transfer across to our universe, but the Doctor prevents him; and Tegan rejoins the Tardis.
12 January 1984: broadcast of third episode of Warriors of the Deep. The Doctor kills the Myrka, but the Sea Devils take over the base.
Also 12 January 1984: filming of the regeneration scene from the Fifth Doctor to the Sixth.
12 January 1985: broadcast of second episode of Attack of the Cybermen. The Doctor helps the Cryons attack the Cybermen, and Lytton, dying, kills the Cyber-Controller.
12 January 2020: broadcast of Orphan 55. Not everything is as it seems at Tranquility Spa — why is the staff so worried about oxygen levels? What are the monsters stalking the corridors? And why does the planet on which they're all standing bear the ominous name of "Orphan 55"?
ii) date specified in canon
12 January 1898: death of Florence Sundvik (in The Curse of Fenric, Seventh Doctor, 1989)
300 days on; eleven into the new year, and I've started my second week back at work – I got straight back into it last Monday, as there is really not much else to do. I must say I’m finding the start of the year hard. This lockdown has gone on much longer than the first, and crucially the weather has been less good, because it’s winter. The nights are now getting shorter again, but they are still pretty long.
I've already had one tweet that has gone viral:
The first chapters of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the Philip K. Dick novel on which the film Blade Runner is based, are set on 3 January 2021. pic.twitter.com/0lzu8JCQ9N
The Belgian numbers were cheering me up when I wrote on 1 January. The infection rate has unfortunately been trending up again in the last few days, though there is some speculation that this represents people who skipped getting tested during the holidays (which means the apparent decrease over Christmas was more apparent than real). Hospitalisations, ICU beds, and deaths continue to decrease in general, which is something. But it's clear that we are a long way off getting back to the office. I note that on 16 May, two months into the first lockdown and just after our first tentative return to the office, I wrote that "Today's numbers are again encouraging – 1750 in hospital, 364 in intensive care, 57 new fatalities" – well, today's numbers are not that different, 1955 in hospital, 371 in ICU and a daily average fatality rate of 53.4 for 1-7 January, but not especially encouraging; back in May we were watching a steady decrease after two months, and now it seems much more wobbly after three. A sobering tweet from Peter Donaghy (who sometimes writes as "Salmon of Data") over the weekend:
Over the last 7 days 0.9% of the population of Ireland have tested positive for COVID-19. Not only is this the highest in the world as of now, it's one of the highest rates ever reported. Excluding microstates, only one country (Belgium) has ever reported more cases per capita. pic.twitter.com/zrXC1SNtZW
As @peterdonaghy said last night, this 1 Nov Belgian figure was the highest per capita infection rate ever reported for anywhere apart from the microstates; more than 1% of the population over 7 days.
Our municipality is still one of those where the incidence is lowest, and Leuven is still the least affected big city. I had been thinking of going into Brussels this week to see a few people and run a few errands, but the rise in numbers in the capital has persuaded me to postpone that to the second half of the month.
Anyway, still here and still watching what is going on.
Mon, 09:37: RT @BillKristol: We have “a bipartisan, blue ribbon panel” to deal with this crisis. It’s called the Congress of the United States. The Hou…
11 January 1941: birth of Malcolm Terris, who played Etnin in The Dominators (Second Doctor, 1968) and the Co-pilot in The Horns of Nimon (Fourth Doctor, 1980).
11 January 1995: death of Peter Pratt, who played the Master in The Deadly Assassin (Fourth Doctor, 1976).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
11 January 1964: broadcast of "The Ambush", fourth episode of hte story we now call The Daleks. The Doctor and friends escape the Dalek city, and the Thals are ambushed by the Daleks; the Doctor realises that the Daleks still have the mercury fluid link.
11 January 1969: broadcast of third episode of The Krotons. The Doctor and Zoe prepare to attack the Krotons, who still hold Jamie prisoner in the Dynotrope.
11 January 1975: broadcast of third episode of Robot. Sarah goes to the Scientific Reform Society and discovers that Kettlewell is one of the conspirators. Hilda Winters and Think Tank retreat to their bunker.
11 January 1982: broadcast of third episode of Castrovalva. The Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa explore Castrovalva; but the captive Adric makes an appearance and the town starts to fold in on itself…
11 January 1983: broadcast of third episode of Arc of Infinity. The Doctor's execution has been faked by Hedin, who is under the control of Omega.
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
My only trip this month seems to have been to Cyprus; I note in several of the book reviews below that I came back with an upset stomach. But I had a sensual shaving experience while I was there. I was also exercised about the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
F and I had a nice visit with B (B is 12 here, and F 10), taking her to a nearby park and blowing bubbles for her.
F and U (aged 6) also enjoyed their uncle and aunt's company at home.
Sat, 12:41: RT @JulianSmithUK: Whatever the frustrations, whatever the imperfections since @niassembly it is such a relief that ultimately everyone sai…
Sat, 12:56: Q&A: Kathleen Belew on The Turner Diaries and Capitol riots https://t.co/tCbXKDMNvJ The novel inspiring the terrorists. “The fact that he can call these people to arms does not mean he can call them off.”
Sat, 13:34: RT @rtraister: My lengthy conversation w @RepJayapal about Wed’s violence, being left in the House gallery as rioters broke windows, her ra…
Sat, 16:51: RT @j9fingers: @nwbrux I almost replied before I looked at your original review; and then I realised I had already done so. Repeating myse…
Sat, 22:02: RT @Edgecliffe: The editor of @forbes tells companies tempted to hire any former Trump press secretary that if they do so “Forbes will assu…
Sat, 22:04: RT @bigfinish: It’s the ninth of the first, so here’s the first of the Ninth Doctor Adventures. Find out more and PRE-ORDER Ravagers he…
Sun, 10:45: As @peterdonaghy said last night, this 1 Nov Belgian figure was the highest per capita infection rate ever reported for anywhere apart from the microstates; more than 1% of the population over 7 days. Though Ireland will beat it in the next couple of days. https://t.co/EUwdjuMQVe
10 January 2018: death of David Fisher, writer of four Fourth Doctor stories.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
10 January 1970: broadcast of second episode of Spearhead from Space. The Doctor steals some clothes and joins up with the Brigadier and Liz. Meanwhile there are sinister goings-on at the plastics factory.
10 January 1976: broadcast of second episode of The Brain of Morbius. The Sisters threaten the Doctor, and blind Sarah; Solon wants the Doctor's head very badly, and we see the disembodied brain.
10 January 1981: broadcast of second episode of Warrior's Gate. Romana is forced into the navigator's chair, and the Doctor forced to repair the Gundan robots until he falls through a mirror.
iii) date specified in-universe
10 January 2540: The President of Earth is unable to address the annual meeting of the Historical Monuments Preservation Society because she has to attend a cabinet meeting.
Out of Africa won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1985, and also five others, Best Director (Sidney Pollack), Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score (John Barry) and Best Sound. Meryl Streep and Klaus Maria Brandauer lost in the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor categories. That year’s Hugo winner, Back to the Future, got four Oscar nominations and won one (Best Sound Editing, where it beat Out of Africa).
The other Best Picture nominees were The Color Purple, Kiss of the Spider Woman and Prizzi’s Honor, which I have not seen, and Witness which I have. IMDB users put it pretty low down for an Oscar winner, 15th on one ranking and 32nd on the other, which is the lowest for any Oscar winner since Tom Jones. Other films I’ve seen from that year (in rough IMDB order, which largely coincides with my own rating): Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, Brazil, A Room With a View, Witness, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, Spies Like Us, Revolution, Defence of the Realm. Like IMDB users, I would rank Out of Africa on a par with Witness, and agree that Back to the Future is the best. Here’s a trailer for Out of Africa (I actually think it’s not a very good trailer):
Well, we have a few returnees from earlier Oscar-winning films, and also a couple of actors who appeared in Doctor Who over the years. Top of the list, obviously, is the film’s star, Meryl Streep, playing Karen Blixen on whose memoirs the film is based. She was Joanne Kramer in Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979, and Linda in The Deer Hunter in 1978.
And next up is Robert Redford as her lover Denys Finch-Hatton, who we previously saw in front of the camera as Johnny Hooker in The Sting in 1973, but he also directed Ordinary People in 1980.
Michael Gough is Lord Delamere here, and had been in Doctor Who twice, as the celestial Toymaker in the 1966 First Doctor story that we now call The Celestial Toymaker, and as Time Lord Councillor Hedin in the 1983 Fifth Doctor story Arc of Infinity. (He was also married to Anneke Wills.)
Going back a bit further, Rachel Kempson, who is Lady Belfield here, was Squire Allworthy’s sister Bridget in Tom Jones in 1963.
Graham Crowden, here her onscreen husband Lord Belfield, was High Priest Soldeed in the notorious 1979-80 Fourth Doctor story The Horns of Nimon.
Shane Rimmer, the decaying estate manager Belknap, has been in an Oscar-wining film (Gandhi, as a news reporter), two Hugo-winning films (the original Star Wars and Dr Strangelove, both times as a pilot), and Seth Harper in the 1966 First Doctor story that we now call The Gunfighters. In sf lore he is of course best known as the voice of Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds.
There are a couple of others who I cannot quite believe were never in Oscar- or Hugo-wining films, or in Doctor Who: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Leslie Phillips, Michael Kitchen (whose character’s African partner is played by Iman, later to marry David Bowie).
Well. I was not blown away by Out of Africa, and I’m ranking it just below the halfway mark in my listing, below Lawrence of Arabia but ahead of Rocky. The biggest problem with it is the racial portrayals: this is a drama about white people in Africa, and the actual Africans are basically scenery. The non-white communities are barely differentiated – the original book makes a point of distinguishing between the Kikuyu, Masai and Somalis, plus of course the Indian community, and it’s clear that Nairobi is a very mixed community; all Africans are the same on screen, and anyone who matters in Nairobi is white. 10 minutes in, we get a gratuitous shot of four young topless African women; Meryl Streep’s body remains decorously covered throughout her love scenes. Malick Bowens, as the protagonist’s right-hand man Farah, is given higher billing in the credits than several of the names I mentioned above, but not given very much to do.
I have to say that I thought the plot and script were also rather dull. Girl meets boy, girl marries his brother and then meets another boy, the last boy dies. There are no real surprises; you know that the Blixens’ marriage is going to be a disaster because we are told so in the third of 160 long minutes in the film, and as soon as Robert Redford appears you pretty much know his character arc.
But I have to give it better marks on gender. I have a poor track record with Meryl Streep’s films, but she is a good performer, and Karen Blixen is an impressive heroine who deals with men on her own terms and runs the coffee plantation single-handed. She defends herself with firearms and flies a plane. The film even passes the Bechdel test, with a couple of educational conversations between Karen and her young neighbour Felicity.
John Barry’s music is rather good, and the cinematography justly deserved an Oscar; the physical landscape is breathtaking anyway, but somehow they have caught it at its most attractive, and the music (which is frankly a bit gushy for the romantic scenes) is well suited to rolling landscapes.
But again, it goes on for 160 minutes, and there is not really enough plot to sustain that length. The makers clearly bet correctly that enough viewers would salivate at the thought of Robert Redford and/or Meryl Streep and/or both to make it a commercial success; but the IMDB voters of today have not sustained the verdict of the Oscar voters of 1986.
I was fully aware that the film is based on more than one book, again because we are told so very early in the credits.
However, it was marketed as a dramatisation of Blixen’s original memoir with the same title from 1937, which I found a quick and very absorbing read. The second paragraph of the third part is:
When Denys Finch-Hatton came back after one of his long expeditions, he was starved for talk, and found me on the farm starved for talk, so that we sat over the dinner-table into the small hours of the morning, talking of all the things we could think of, and mastering them all, and laughing at them. White people, who for a long time live alone with Natives, get into the habit of saying what they mean, because they have no reason or opportunity for dissimulation, and when they meet again their conversation keeps the Native tone. We then kept up the theory that the wild Masai tribe, in their Manyatta under the hills, would see the house all afire, like a star in the night, as the peasants of Umbria saw the house wherein Saint Francis and Saint Clare were entertaining one another upon theology.
Blixen is no anthropologist, but she makes a serious effort to engage with Kenya and the people on their own terms and to describe it respectfully to her European audience. She goes fairly deeply into religion, which is not mentioned on screen at all. As already noted, she carefully distinguished between the different African and non-African groups, and it’s clear that her Kenya is very racially mixed, and that the days of white rule, only a few decades old, are already numbered.
It’s not actually a novel. It’s a collection of short reflective pieces, all of course linked, four of the five sections pursuing their own internal thread (though the penultimate sections is a grab-bag of vignettes). I think perhaps a third or a quarter of what’s in the book made it to the screen. The core plot of the film, her romance with Finch-Hatton, is not at all explicit in the book, though it’s pretty obvious what is going on from the number of times his name is mentioned, and it’s almost a shock when her husband is mentioned for the first time on page 193 of 283. There is not a lot explicitly about racism, but here’s one of the short pieces in full:
The Elite of Bournemouth
I had as neighbour a settler who had been a doctor at home. Once, when the wife of one of my houseboys was about to die in childbirth, and I could not get into Nairobi, because the long rains had ruined the roads, I wrote to my neighbour and asked him to do me the great service of coming over and helping her. He very kindly came, in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm and torrents of tropical rain, and, at the last moment, by his skill, he saved the life of the woman and the child.
Afterwards he wrote me a letter to say that although he had for once, on my appeal, treated a Native, I must understand that he could not let that sort of thing occur again. I myself would fully realize the fact, he felt convinced, when he informed me that he had before now, practised to the élite of Bournemouth.
And there is some gorgeous description, especially of the landscape. Here’s the description of her first plane flight with Finch-Hatton (the subject of the film clip I used to illustrate the music above):
We flew in the sun, but the hillside lay in a transparent brown shade, which soon we got into. It did not take us long to spy the buffalo from the air. Upon one of the long rounded green ridges which run, like folds of a cloth gathered together at each peak, down the side of the Ngong mountain, a herd of twenty-seven buffalo were grazing. First we saw them a long way below us, like mice moving gently on a floor, but we dived down, circling over and along their ridge, a hundred and fifty feet above them and well within shooting distance; we counted them as they peacefully blended and separated. There was one very old big black bull in the herd, one or two younger bulls, and a number of calves. The open stretch of sward upon which they walked was closed in by bush; had a stranger approached on the ground they would have heard or scented him at once, but they were not prepared for advance from the air. We had to keep moving above them all the time. They heard the noise of our machine and stopped grazing, but they did not seem to have it in them to look up. In the end they realized that something very strange was about; the old bull first walked out in front of the herd, raising his hundredweight horns, braving the unseen enemy, his four feet planted on the ground – suddenly he began to trot down the ridge and after a moment he broke into a canter. The whole clan now followed him, stampeding headlong down, and as they switched and plunged into the bush, dust and loose stones rose in their wake. In the thicket they stopped and kept close together: it looked as if a small glade in the hill had been paved with dark grey stones. Here they believed themselves to be covered to the view, and so they were to anything moving along the ground, but they could not hide themselves from the eyes of the bird of the air. We flew up and away.
There’s also a lovely anecdote about a young Swede teaching her Swahili, who is embarrassed by the fact that the Swahili for “nine” (tisa) sounds like the Swedish for “pee” (tisse), and convinces her that there is in fact no number nine in Swahili until someone puts her straight. I sympathise a little. I have known a number of baronesses in my time, and I don’t recall ever saying the word “pee” in front of any of them.
One other point that I noted while researching this post: they were all younger than we see on screen, the men much younger. When Karen married Baron Blixen in 1914, she was 28 and he was 27. She first met Denys Finch Hatton in 1918, when she was 33 and he was 31. Meryl Streep was 36 when the film was made, Klaus Maria Brandauer 42 and Robert Redford 49. Knowing the real ages of the protagonists does change the way you understand the story, I think.
Kenya is not a country I know much about – I changed planes in Nairobi three times in my South Sudan days, with long stopovers but no tourism each time, and the only other books I’ve read that explore it in any detail are also autobiographies, by Barack Obama and Vince Cable. Unlike the other two, this book made me want to know more. You can get it here.
My next Oscar-winning film is Platoon, but I’ll watch Aliens first.
Fri, 13:25: RT @jburnmurdoch: NEW: a common response to reports of hospitals struggling this winter is “it’s no different to a bad flu season!” I’ve t…
Fri, 17:11: RT @johnnythin: Development-led archaeology making the ‘non-places’ (in the sense of Augé or Relph) of shopping malls, business parks and h…
Sat, 00:49: RT @TwitterSafety: After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently su…
9 January 1965: broadcast of "Desperate Measures", second episode of the story we now call The Rescue. Koquillion is unmasked as Bennett; the Didonians kill him, and Vicki leaves with the Tardis.
9 January 1971: broadcast of second episode of Terror of the Autons. McDermott is killed by the chair; the older Farrel by the doll; and the Doctor and the Brigadier are abducted by Auton policemen.
8 January 1981: filming of the regeneration scene from the Fourth Doctor to the Fifth.
8 January 2013: broadcast of fourth episode of K9's Question Time as part of the Stargazing Live show. (I haven't seen this!!!)
iii) date specified in canon
9 January 2000: Jack Harkness becomes leader of Torchwood Three, as explained in Fragments (2008).
Current Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake At Childhood’s End, by Sophie Aldred Out of Africa, by Karen Blixen
Last books finished The Prisoner: A Day in the Life, by Hank Stine The Home and the World, by Rabindranath Tagore The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern
Next books Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Volume 2, by Jody Houser Gallimaufrey, by Colin Baker
Thu, 14:17: RT @madeleine: My family came to America after fleeing a coup, so I know that freedom is fragile. But I never thought I would see such an a…
Thu, 16:36: RT @Zeteram: @nwbrux I was assigned this book in high school right as Terry Goodkind released “Faith of the Fallen” and to my disgust they…
Thu, 18:01: RT @keithmfitz: Rand’s plots only “worked” if she turned the US government into a cartoonishly bad version of the Communist Party of the So…
Thu, 18:30: RT @Nickpheas: @nwbrux I was reading that as I went out of signal on a drive boat in the Red Sea in November 2016, only to finish it and co…
Thu, 21:35: RT @JoeBiden: What we witnessed yesterday was not dissent — it was disorder. They weren’t protestors — they were rioters, insurrectionist…
Thu, 21:36: RT @KamalaHarris: We have witnessed two systems of justice: one that let extremists storm the U.S. Capitol yesterday, and another that rele…
Thu, 21:39: RT @MrSamWilkin: Events in the US have made me finally grasp the genius of the European Parliament layout. Imagine it, one moment you’re s…
Thu, 21:43: RT @JoeSondow: Stop saying history will judge them. Judge them now. With judges.
Thu, 21:49: RT @mekkaokereke: I applaud the people brave enough to leave the Trump administration now. It takes courage. After airline flights, I too…
Thu, 23:24: @Christicorvus, you lost me right here at the start. Why should FST change at all, except to recognise new ward boundaries? It’s less than 400 electors off the UK quota. But you want to move 16,000 Dungannon voters out and 10,000 Tyrone voters in. Why? https://t.co/QGxcMvUIfp
Thu, 23:31: RT @MichelleObama: Like all of you, I’ve been feeling so many emotions since yesterday. I tried to put my thoughts down here: https://t.co/…
8 January 1908: they don't get more fundamental than this: birth of William Hartnell, who played the First Doctor from 1963 to 1966, and returned for The Three Doctors in 1972-73.
ii) broadcast and production anniversaries
8 January 1966: broadcast of "Golden Death", the ninth episode of the story we now call The Daleks' Master Plan. Both the Doctor's Tardis and the Monk's arrive in ancient Egypt, pursued by the Daleks and Mavic Chen. The last of the surviving episodes from this story.
8 January 1971: broadcast of second episode of Day of the Daleks. Jo is captured and brought to the 22nd Century; the Doctor is confronted by a Dalek emerging from the time vortex.
8 January 1977: broadcast of second episode of The Face of Evil. The Doctor passes the Test of the Horda; Xoanon unleashes the invisible monsters on the Sevateem.
What happened yesterday was pretty awful. Angry mobs storming parliamentary buildings is a bit unusual, to put it mildly, in developed democracies. I’ve seen it happen in other countries that I follow, but it’s generally reserved for elections that are, how can one put it, early in that country’s democratic hostory.
At the same time it should have been no surprise. Trump’s campaign was built on lies from the very beginning, and the media failed to call him out on his lies early enough. But more importantly, the US political debate seems to have descended into a post-truth situation, where there is no longer agreement on basic facts, like where Barack Obama was born, or who won the 2020 election.
This isn’t unique to the US (the Brexit campaign being a dismal case in point), and it’s not a completely new development (as a glance at the history of US election campaigns will show). But it’s clearly been facilitated by allowing freedom of expression (for those who can afford it) a higher priority than public safety when the FCC dropped the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. The Fairness Doctrine might not have been sustainable in the digital age, now that everyone can become their own publisher on the internet, but at least it was a benchmark for good behaviour. Since then, the rabid right have used age-old tactics to radicalise their base and get funding to create a fact-free universe of discourse.
We in fandom had a taste of this five years ago with the Sad Puppies campaigns. Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen and Vox Day (and others) steadily pumped out lies about the Hugo awards and indeed about their own actions, and bragged about how much good this was doing their sales. Sticking to the truth was much less important for them than owning the libs. Hugo voters were repulsed by their tactics and rejected them massively. It’s awful that 46% of US voters did not feel that way about Donald Trump in 2016. It’s even worse that he got 47% in 2020. (Which fortunately was not enough.)
Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts. That aphorism has been turned on its head by recent history. I don’t know what the conclusion is. Perhaps it shows that it’s always worth challenging intellectual and rhetorical dishonesty if you have the energy, including from people you normally agree with. The truth is worth standing up for.
Wed, 16:05: Immunoloog waarschuwt dat het te traag gaat in ons land: Derde golf staat voor de deur” https://t.co/k9XjJrcvwf Warning that Belgium could face a third wave…
Wed, 18:53: Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships, by Camilla Pang https://t.co/t158z7m1U9
Wed, 19:25: RT @AriBerman: Arizona election results were certified by GOP governor, GOP attorney general & GOP Chief Justice of state Supreme Court. GO…
Wed, 19:38: RT @GraceMallon3: I thought I could watch the coverage of the objections in Congress but we’re five minutes into the House debate and my ha…
Wed, 20:48: For UK’s Lord Speaker, coronavirus recalls fight against AIDS (and Thatcher) https://t.co/OhrkvwwcVo More interesting than i expected!
Wed, 20:48: RT @happyroadkill: For protesting past curfew BLM was tear gassed, run over, mutilated, taken into unmarked vehicles, and killed. Meanwhile…
Wed, 20:52: RT @wiczipedia: These images of deranged, violent individuals storming one of the symbols of American power are going to follow the United…
Wed, 20:53: RT @catvalente: Stop calling them protesters. They’re terrorists. They’re not protesting a damn thing.
Wed, 20:53: RT @DaveClark_AFP: Is this the first riot where the protesters are less likely to be wearing masks than the bystanders?
Wed, 21:29: RT @stellduffy: Say it. White people storm the Capitol. You know they’d name it if it were Black people.
Wed, 21:34: RT @jensstoltenberg: Shocking scenes in Washington, D.C. The outcome of this democratic election must be respected.
Wed, 22:29: RT @Bill_Esterson: Isn’t there something else you should be commenting on, Foreign Secretary?
Wed, 22:41: RT @BBCBreaking: “At this hour our democracy is under unprecedented assault, unlike anything we’ve seen in recent times” US President-elec…
Wed, 23:02: RT @JoeBiden: I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution by demanding an en…
Wed, 23:02: RT @JoeBiden: Let me be very clear: the scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not represent who we are. What we are seeing is a small number of…
Wed, 23:10: RT @jonlis1: America has changed. It is no longer what it was. It no longer sets an example for democracy or anything else. But don’t for o…
Wed, 23:22: RT @jahimes: The House will return to business shortly. We will do our job, we will do what the constitution dictates and we will not let t…
Wed, 23:25: RT @PennyRed: @AyoCaesar A not insignificant amount of the radicalisation and recruitment of neo-fash in the US can be traced back to gamer…
Thu, 01:53: RT @DaveKeating: My country has just experienced an insurrection. It’s not over yet. I have no idea what’s coming next. Seeing Brexiteers…
Thu, 02:03: RT @DaveKeating: Just in – an extraordinary statement from Trump’s former Defence Secretary Jim Mattis: Trump’s abuse of the presidency ha…
Thu, 02:55: RT @RoguePOTUSStaff: About 150 members of Congress started the day with an plan that they would try to stage a coup. Then a group of citize…
Thu, 08:26: RT @TheOnion: D.C. Police Lose Control Of Rioting Trump Supporters After Hundreds Of Officers Called Away To Deal With Black Jaywalker http…
Thu, 08:38: RT @mollycrabapple: On January 20, 2017, the day of Trump’s inauguration, police kettled 217 anti-Trump protesters in the freezing cold and…
Thu, 09:08: RT @WScetrine: A majority in the US House of Representatives have voted not to overturn Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania
Thu, 09:28: And with Rhode Island certified, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win with over 279 votes. At last.
Thu, 09:41: And that’s it. No Republican senator prepared to sustain Wisconsin objection. 0340 in Washington DC and Biden / Harris are elected President and Vice-President. Whew. But this has been dreadful and showed Trump’s irresponsible ghastliness to the full. People died.
Thu, 10:25: RT @itvnews: Watch @robertmooreitv‘s report from inside the Capitol building as the extraordinary events unfolded in Washington DC https://…
Thu, 11:43: RT @amyklobuchar: We finished our work and we overcame every objection and announced the last few states and signed all the reports and des…
7 January 1913: birth of Francis De Wolff, who played Vasor in The Keys of Marinus (1964) and Agamemnon in The Myth Makers (1965).
7 January 1924: birth of Geoffrey Bayldon, who played Organon in The Creature from the Pit (1979) and the alternate timeline Doctor-who-never-left-Gallifrey in Big Finish audios Auld Mortality (2003) and A Storm of Angels (2005). Also Catweazle.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
7 January 1967: broadcast of fourth episode of The Highlanders. The Doctor rescues everyone, Grey is led off to jail, and Jamie leaves with the Tardis crew.
7 January 1978: broadcast of first episode of Underworld. The Doctor lands on the Minyans' ship, and they are bombarded by space debris.
Who hasn't argued with their mother at some point about tidying their room, and had differing interpretations of what constitutes mess?
A short book by a biochemist who proudly flies the flag of her own autism diagnosis, explaining how people work from her point of view. From her point of view seems to mean mainly comparing human interactions to phenomena in biochemistry, which may be insightful for people who know more than I do about biochemistry, but since I don't, it was a matter of explaining something I already more or less understand – human behaviour – in terms of something I don't. The book won a prize but it didn't work for me. You can get it here.
Tue, 14:10: A thread on the likely Boundary Commission recommendations for the Northern Ireland seats. The next round of constituency boundary reforms has just kicked off. There will still be 650 MPs, 543 from England (+10), 549 for Scotland (-2), 32 for Wales (-8) and 16 for NI (same).
Tue, 14:20: Always annoying when you make two mistakes in the first tweet of a long thread. New numbers are 57 for Scotland (down 2) and 18 for Northern Ireland (no change). https://t.co/RPlts8F9CH
Tue, 15:41: RT @BCommNI: @ONS has today published the UK Parliamentary Electorate figures, marking the start of the first stage of the 2023 Review of U…
Tue, 17:11: How Co Down couple breathed new life into historic ‘Frankenstein house’ Castle Ward https://t.co/FGzVRdSC84 Glorious. (This is the ancestral home of Lalla “Romana II” Ward.)
Tue, 20:48: The Spouses of American Presidents and Vice-Presidents https://t.co/tHSn5QFlTn I need to update this as I now have a dob for Mary King – 22 August 1827, so she married future VP William Wheeler a month after her 18th birthday in 1845.
Wed, 09:12: Well, looks like it’s good news from #Georgia at least. When do the two new senators take office?
Wed, 10:45: Why Britain Failed, Again https://t.co/VTJnKmNmLj “This is not a failure of science advice,” Mark Walport, Britain’s former chief scientific adviser, told me. “The policy makers had their attention drawn to what was coming.”
6 January 1955: birth of Rowan Atkinson, who played the Ninth Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death.
6 January 2009: death of John Scott Martin, Dalek operator and player of many parts in Old Who.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
6 January 1968: broadcast of third episode of The Enemy of the World. Formerly the only surviving episode of the story (but the rest has now been found), with Denes kept prisoner in a corridor (!), Victoria working in the kitchen, and Salamander realising that something is up.
6 January 1973: broadcast of second episode of The Three Doctors. The Second Doctor, the Brigadier, Benton and the Tardis are transported to Omega's world to join the Third Doctor and Jo.
6 January 1979: broadcast of third episode of The Power of Kroll. The Swampies try to execute Romana, the Doctor and Rohm-Dutt, but they manage to escape by screaming; and Kroll rises from the deep.
6 January 1982: broadcast of second episode of Warriors of the Deep. The Silurians attack the seabase and the Doctor and Tegan are trapped by the Myrka.
The numbers are out which will determine how many seats each part of the UK gets at the next Westminster election. As you may remember, the original plan to cut 50 seats from the House of Commons has been dropped, but the tight constraints remain on constituency sizes – they should be within 5% of the UK average, with certain exceptions; on which more below. I had a brief moment of excitement when I thought that Northern Ireland might lose a seat, but I was looking at the wrong table, and it remains at 18 seats. The numbers are:
Electors
Quotas
seats
England minus two Isle of Wight seats
39,748,705
541.59
(+2)
543
+10
Scotland minus two island seats
4,023,611
54.82
(+2)
57
-2
Wales minus Ynys Môn
2,270,262
30.93
(+1)
32
-8
Northern Ireland
1,295,868
17.65
18
nc
total
47,338,266
UK quota
73,392.66
NI average
71,982.67
The previous round of proposed changes was quashed by the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal, which found that 1) the Commission had not adequately explained its application of Rule 7, which allows the Commission to vary seats in Northern Ireland by up to 5% from the average for NI alone, and 2) that it had not sufficiently taken into account public consultation responses in the final stage of the process. It was academic anyway, as the changes were never put to Parliament for approval. One significant change to the process this time round is that Parliament doesn't get a choice, and the Boundary Commission recommendations will come into force automatically.
A quick aside on the first point: I personally urged the Commission not to be shy about invoking this extra flexibility for the last round of revisions, in order to make its own work easier. The Commission did so for both its revised proposals and its final report, but the courts found that while the Commission was not wrong to invoke the lower limit, it should have explained itself better. When I previewed the figures this time last year, I thought that it might be possible to get away without needing to invoke the rule this time round. The numbers have shifted only a little, but enough that I am not as confident that it can be done – the average NI seat is going to be 2% smaller than the UK quota, so you're starting with a deficit of 1400 for each seat when the wiggle room is only 3669 from the average.
I think the 5% variation in constituency size is way too tight anyway- worldwide, only the notoriously contested redistricting of the seats of the U.S. House of Representatives has a tighter margin – but I also think that we will probably need to see a couple of revision cycles go through with that unrealistic restriction before the powers that be catch themselves on and it gets changed. (I have been told that the Conservatives were originally looking at a 2% rather than 5% variation in constituency size, back in 2008; that really would have been difficult and painful to implement, and would certainly have meant breaching ward boundaries all over the place.)
The Electoral Office has now published the parliamentary electorate as on March 2020 for the existing 18 seats and for the old electoral wards from which they are constructed; and the seats will be drawn to match the parliamentary rather than local government voters. British, Irish and Commonwealth citizens can vote in all elections; citizens of the other 24 EU countries can vote in local and Assembly elections, at least for now; expat voters can vote for Westminster elections, but not local or Assembly elections.
However the new seats will be drawn on the new wards, and the electoral office has published only the local government electorate for those wards, which will be larger than the parliamentary electorate. In some cases there are very big differences. Several of the old Dungannon wards recorded between 20% and 35% of local government voters who do not have parliamentary votes, a total of 2,600 voters; these were presumably mostly EU citizens connected with Moy Park.
(There is a not very interesting discussion to be had about whether electoral boundaries should take account of the number of registered voters or the total population. Worldwide, about a third of countries allocate seats on the basis of the number of voters, and about half on the basis of total population. Personally I incline a bit towards basing them on the number of voters, which in the UK is just as easy, if not easier, to track, and also I don't really see why areas with larger non-voting populations – children and non-citizens – necessarily deserve greater representation. But I am not especially bothered.)
Coming back to the main point, what will the new Northern Ireland electoral map look like? The first thing to note is that there is already a big problem with the sizes of the 18 constituencies. There are 1.29 times as many voters in Upper Bann as in East Antrim, which is way too big a variation. NB that both East Antrim and Upper Bann are held by the DUP; looking at the five largest and five smallest seats, in both cases three are held by the DUP and two by SF, so this isn't especially a party political issue.
Looking at the quota for the UK as a whole (the average electorate for the 645 seats apart from than the five island constituencies) we can see that eleven of Northern Ireland's 18 constituencies deviate from it by more than 5%. The UK-wide quota will be 73,392.66, so in principle each seat should have no less than 69,724 voters and no more than 77,062. Under the rules, Northern Ireland is allowed extra wiggle room, if necessary, taking the lower limit down to 68,313. (Which would mean that East Londonderry is actually OK; but I think the geography of West Tyrone means that it will have to change anyway.) This map shows the divergence from the UK-wide quota of each of the 18 Northern Ireland seats, and the table gives the same figures and also the number of voters by which each seat exceeds or falls short of the permissible size (including also the potential lower margin for Northern Ireland).
(Maps above and below adapted from the one on the Northern Ireland Assembly website.)
Constituency
March 2020
electorate
difference from
UK quota
difference from
upper/lower limit
held by
East Antrim
64,907
-11.6%
-4,820 (-3,406)
DUP
Belfast West
65,761
-10.4%
-3,966 (-2,552)
SF
Belfast East
66,273
-9.7%
-3,454 (-2,040)
DUP
West Tyrone
66,339
-9.6%
-3,388 (-2,274)
SF
Strangford
66,990
-8.7%
-2,737 (-1,323)
DUP
North Down
67,109
-8.6%
-2,618 (-1,204)
Alliance
East Londonderry
69,359
-5.5%
-368 (OK)
DUP
Belfast South
70,134
-4.2%
OK
SDLP
Mid Ulster
70,501
-3.9%
OK
SF
South Antrim
71,915
-2.0%
OK
DUP
Belfast North
72,332
-1.4%
OK
SF
Fermanagh and South Tyrone
72,945
-0.6%
OK
SF
Foyle
74,431
+1.4%
OK
SDLP
Lagan Valley
75,884
+3.4%
OK
DUP
North Antrim
77,156
+5.1%
+90
DUP
South Down
79,295
+8.0%
+2,229
SF
Newry and Armagh
81,329
+10.8%
+4,263
SF
Upper Bann
83,028
+13.1%
+5,962
DUP
Total
1,295,688
The good thing about this is that there are a number of seats which will hardly have to change at all. There will have to be some smoothing at the edges, because the map of electoral wards, which are the building blocks for the constituencies, has been drastically changed and there is no seat whose boundaries exactly match the new ward boundaries. But if we colour in the under-quota seats in red, the over-quota seats in blue, and the within-quota seats in green, we can see that the question resolves into three distinct geographical challenges.
First of all, West Belfast is an isolated undersized constituency, at 10.4% below the quota. But it borders Lagan Valley, which is 3.4% above the quota. If 4,000-6,000 Lagan Valley voters could be found, conveniently located on the border with West Belfast, they could be moved in, keeping both seats within limits. The two wards of Derryaghy and Lambeg are conveniently located on the border with West Belfast, and together they have 5,051 local government voters (the number of Westminster voters will be a bit less), so I would not be surprised to see West Belfast being extended further south (as was proposed by the Boundary Commission for the 17-seat map).
That leaves two broad zones to consider. First, the south-eastern belt of six seats, three of them contiguous and over-sized (Newry and Armagh, Upper Bann and South Down) and three of them contiguous and undersized (East Belfast, North Down and Strangford). If the neighbouring seats of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Lagan Vally and South Belfast are left largely alone due to already being the right size (apart from straightening out the boundaries for the new wards, and the adjustment to the Lagan Valley/West Belfast border mentioned above), there aren't a lot of solutions. I could see the following emerge:
Upper Bann takes Tandragee and Loughgall, with upwards of 7,500 voters, from Newry and Armagh, which puts Newry and Armagh at the right number;
Upper Bann then cedes Banbridge and Loughbrickland, with around 18,000 voters, to South Down, which puts Upper Bann in the zone;
at the other end, North Down gives East Belfast the two western wards, Holywood and Loughview, with 6,400 voters, which sets East Belfast right;
North Down must take the entire Ards Peninsula (once you've taken one ward you have to go all the way), with 18,000 voters, from Strangford, which puts it in the zone;
Strangford now needs at least another 21,000 voters, and South Down needs to lose about the same number. The seven wards comprising Downpatrick and its immediate hinterland have 20,500 local government voters, which may not be enough; if you add Dundrum that's 23,700 which is probably safe. Strangford should be renamed East Down at that rate.
The northern belt of four constituencies is probably the most difficult to resolve. West Tyrone is 9.6% under the quota; East Londonderry 5.5% under; North Antrim 5.1% over and East Antrim, the smallest constituency, 11.6% under. There simply aren't enough voters there for four seats with at least 95% of the UK quota each (there are, just about, if we take the special lower limit for Northern Ireland, but even then I don't think the geography of the wards makes it possible). It's also difficult to justify much tinkering with the boundaries of the neighbouring seats, and even if we could, the wiggle room on their numbers is limited. My best guess would be that:
a nibble is taken from Foyle to help the numbers – perhaps Eglinton ward, with 2,850 voters, annexed to East Londonderry, though it could be Slievekirk, with 2,600, added to West Tyrone;
West Tyrone expands northwards by a couple of wards (certainly Park, with 2,600 voters, and either Slievekirk as noted above or Claudy with another 2,600) – it would probably have to be renamed Sperrin due to too much non-Tyrone territory;
East Londonderry needs another 3,000-5,500 voters now,and that probably means Giant's Causeway and Kinbane, with 5,200 between them; that takes it almost to Ballycastle, so East Londonderry would probably get renamed Causeway Coast;
North Antrim is now OK on numbers, but cannot give any more ground to East Antrim;
Neither South Antrim nor North Belfast has a lot to give, but I guess if all the necessary ward boundary adjustments are resolved in East Antrim's favour, it may only need another ward or two from one or both of its southern neighbours (Jordanstown from South Antrim? Carnmoney Hill from North Belfast?) to get the numbers to come out. North Belfast might also take a nibble from West Belfast to ease the numbers.
The changes to East Londonderry and West Tyrone/Sperrin in particular will look striking on the map, but actually will not involve all that many people owing to the sparse population of the areas concerned. The biggest single shift of voters would be in the south-eastern corner of Northern Ireland with Downpatrick moving from South Down to Strangford/East Down.
That's also the biggest political shift. Strangford/East Down certainly gets enough Nationalist voters for them to elect a Nationalist to the Assembly, and to give the DUP's opponents at Westminster elections a tactical boost; South Down on the other hand certainly loses a Nationalist seat at Assembly level. The Ards Peninsula moving into North Down at the cost of more favourable territory in Holywood certainly makes life interesting for Stephen Farry of the Alliance Party, but it's far from a killer blow. Those who feel that they may have something to lose from the process will of course have plenty of time and opportunity to make their voices heards.
This will be a lot less painful than the proposed maps when we were looking at a reduction in the number of seats from 18 to 16 or 17, and frankly I hope that something like this goes through. In the end, rearranging boundaries for 18 seats is a lot less painful than chopping one, let alone two, from the map.
Mon, 12:56: #DoctorWho Jodie Whittaker rumoured to leave after next series https://t.co/F1OMIvgnTg Would not be surprising. She’ll have done three seasons (even if one truncated) plus specials which is standard (Hartnell, Troughton, Davison, McCoy, Tennant, Smith, Capaldi).
Mon, 14:28: RT @peterjbirks: @nwbrux See also the new daily Rosslare to Dunkirk RoRo service (story on Reuters, I think). Although figures were probabl…
Tue, 10:45: RT @joshgerstein: JUST IN: Another brutal opinion dismissing suit seeking to overturn 2020 election results. Argument ‘lies somewhere betwe…
Tue, 10:45: BREAKING: Looks like Northern Ireland loses a seat in Boundary Commission shakeup. Statistics published today show only enough voters for 17.37 constituencies, compared with the current 18. https://t.co/Y6iPjjlwBK
5 January 1929: birth of Norman Kay, who composed the incidental music for An Unearthly Child (1963), The Keys of Marinus, (1964) and The Sensorites (also 1964).
5 January 1988: birth of Mandip Gill, who currently plays Yasmin Khan on Doctor Who.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
5 January 1974: broadcast of fourth episode of The Time Warrior. Rubeish and the Doctor return the kidnapped scientists to the twentieth century; Linx kills Irongron and is in turn killed by Boba Fett Hal; and his spaceship explodes on take-off, destroying the castle.
5 January 1980: broadcast of third episode of The Horns of Nimon. The Doctor and Romana discover the source of the Nimons' energy, but Soldeed catches them.
5 January 1982: broadcast of second episode of Castrovalva. Tegan and Nyssa jettison a quarter of the Tardis rooms, and bring what's left to Castrovalva.
5 January 1983: broadcast of second episode of Arc of Infinity. Tegan goes to Amsterdam to find her cousins; the Doctor is apparently executed by the Time Lords.
5 January 1984: broadcast of first episode of Warriors of the Deep, starting Season 21. The Tardis lands in an undersea base in the year 2084, and is caught up in human Cold War politics and the rise of the reptiles.
5 January 1985: broadcast of first episode of Attack of the Cybermen, starting Season 22. The Tardis lands in London, where Lytton is doing something sinister; meanwhile on Telos, something else sinister is happening.
5 January 2020: broadcast of Spyfall, Part 2. Having been separated from her friends, the Doctor must figure out a way of stopping the Kasaavin and a familiar foe before their plan is put into action. Can she reach her friends and save the world with only a sonic screwdriver to help her?
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
Lots of travel in August 2009. On our way to Northern Ireland we stayed with cousins in Croydon, and with H in Brighton, and I seem to have done some research in Kew as well; and then the weekend after we returned to Belgium, we were back in England again for a family wedding. Here's F meeting his cousins then in Croydon (the older of whom turned 20 yesterday).
Of all the months I have been book-blogging this is the one in which I read the most books, pumped up by a very indolent holiday, and by listening to a lot of Doctor Who audiobooks while cooking or shopping. The grand total is 52:
Total page count ~15,000 (YTD ~71,600)
9 (YTD 51/251) by women (Paula Devine, Dava Sobel, Harper Lee, Jane Austen, Michelle Magorian, Jessica Gregson, Margo Lanagan, Stephenie Meyer, Keiko Tobe)
1 (YTD 14/252) by PoC (Tobe)
With so many books, I'm actually going to single out four that I really liked and three that I didn't. (Not including old favourites To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of Light.) The four new reads that I especially liked:
On the Beach, by Nevil Shute, one of the great post-apocalypse novels; you can get it here.
The Night Sessions, by Ken MacLeod, set in a relatively near-future independent Scotland, after the victory of secularism against religion throughout the English-speaking world, but is nothing like as polemical as that summary might make it sound. You can get it here.
Threshold, the first of the six volumes of Roger Zelazny’s short fiction; a lot of jewels I hadn’t previously encountered (and many that I had). You can get it here.
The Target Book: A History of the Target Doctor Who Books, by David J. Howe; complete story of an important element of Who history. You can get it here.
And the three that I disrecommend are:
Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, a dreadful book which will fill young women’s heads with nonsense. You can get it here.
How the Mind Works, by Stephen Pinker; the good bits are not original, and the original bits are not good. You can get it here.
Doctor Who – Mission to Magnus, by Philip Martin; incoherent and sexist. You can get it here.
Sun, 12:34: RT @TimandraHarknes: What are you putting into the console of your mood organ today? I need “focussed optimism with an edge of self discipl…
Sun, 12:56: RT @koryodynasty: 1/ I thought I’d write about my experience re-entering South Korea, where I reside, during this global pandemic. It wasn’…
Sun, 14:42: RT @citizencomply: Was it Hal’s birthday before 2001’s odyssey, the current rise of Gilead, or Philip K Dick that created this alternate in…
Sun, 15:51: RT @nwbrux: The first chapters of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the Philip K. Dick novel on which the film Blade Runner is based, a…
Sun, 16:05: RT @rhipratchett: Never as much as when I talk about Dad’s younger literature, do the replies make me realised how much he helped create be…
Sun, 18:48: RT @filmsonwax: Notice that they have to set a schedule for their depression, whereas my brain just does mine on a whim. https://t.co/A5yMX…
Sun, 19:55: RT @keithedwards: Wow. WaPo just released a recording showing President Trump attempting to blackmail Georgia’s Secretary of State to overt…
Sun, 20:48: RT @duncan3ross: Prediction time: Jan 6 – Congress approves the EC result despite GOP shenanigans Jan 7 – @realDonaldTrump resigns saying…
Sun, 22:20: RT @DecKelleher: Saddened to hear of the death of Sir Brian Urquhart, a founding father of the UN, and a brilliant and physically courageou…
Mon, 10:45: European elections to watch in 2021 https://t.co/dq3i7jBM5o Lets of good info. My old friend @anamartinsgomes currently in. second place for Portugal’s presidential election – best of luck to her!
4 January 1947: birth of Terry Molloy, who played Davros three times in Old Who and also undercover policeman Russell in Attack of the Cybermen (Sixth Doctor, 1985)
4 January 1970: birth of Shayne Armstrong, who co-wrote seven episodes of the Australian K9 series.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
4 January 1964: broadcast of "The Escape", third episode of the story we now call The Daleks. Susan meets Alydon the Thal in the forest, and returns to the others in the city, where they capture a Dalek.
4 January 1969: broadcast of second episode of The Krotons. Zoe and the Doctor take the test and enter the machine; the Krotons manifest themselves.
4 January 1975: broadcast of second episode of Robot. K1, the robot, kills a cabinet minister and threatens to kill the Doctor.
4 January 1982: broadcast of first episode of Castrovalva first full story with Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, starting Season 19 of Old Who. The new Doctor collapses; Adric is captured by the Master; and the Tardis is heading back to the Big Bang…
4 January 1989: broadcast of fourth episode of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, ending Season 25. The Gods of Ragnarok are behind the circus; the Doctor defies them and the circus collapses into rubble.
I took B to a new place yesterday near where she lives, somewhere I've only just found: the Necropolis at Grimde It's a 13th century church which had become very dilapidated by 1914, and was used as a burial place for the Belgian soldiers killed during the German advance in the area. After the war it was done up properly, and apparently is unique in Western Europe as a church which has been completely converted to a war grave.
I have to say that just because it's the only such case doesn't in itself make it all that interesting. The graves are reverently and neatly laid out, with no hierarchy among the dead. I signed the visitors' book on behalf of myself and B; the last people before us to sign it did so on 23 December.
The stained glass windows are the artistic highlight of the Necropolis. All were designed by Maurice Langaskens, himself a prisoner in the first world war. (Click to embiggen.)
A leaflet in English (in plentiful supply) explains the iconography (again click to embiggen).
For B, the main attraction was the shadow of her own hand, starkly defined by the bright and concentrated overhead lights and the lighter floor. She isn't making any particular shape, I think, just enjoying the contrast of light and dark that she is able to create for herself.
If you want to see for yourself, it's open until 5pm in the winter and 6pm in the summer. It won't be crowded. And it's a stone's throw from two other fascinating places in Grimde, the Three Tumuli and the Church of Our Lady of the Stone.
It's a 13th century church which had become very dilapidated by 1914, and was used as a burial place for the Belgian soldiers killed during the German advance in the area. After the war it was done up properly, and apparently is unique in Western Europe as a church which has been completely converted to a war grave.
