News Archives: April 2005

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Animal Hospital

This morning, I noticed a very upset blackbird, plus Cary showing a certain interest in the bins outside the back door. He came in when I opened the door, so I assumed there wasn't anything too interesting. A few minutes ago, he was at the bins again, and when I opened the door I found out why - a young blackbird with no tail feathers popped out from behind the bins, and chirped at me as if to say "Get rid of the cat, please." Both cats went inside pretty easily, I phoned Claire and inspected the bird as best I can. Its a juvenile, and something has sheared off its tail feathers. Given they're doing some garden building two doors along, I'd guess it got a rock or paving slab dropped on it.

The young bird is noisy and not particularly scared of me, so Claire and I agreed the best plan was to pop it in a shoe box, bring it inside, and try to feed it. Everythings gone fine, apart from the feeding - it's young enough to want to be feed, and will open its beak for me, but even with tweezers its not taking anything I offer it. Closer inspection has also revealed a badly broken leg which is bleeding slightly. So I've phoned the SSPCA (Scottish branch of the RSPCA) and they're sending someone round to take it to their hospital. At the moment it's sat in the sun room - with two closed doors between it and the cats! - hopping around the room and squawking at every passing bird it sees.

The cats themselves are both a little unwell. Cisco has a number of grazes on his back - patches of missing fur and skin about the size of a 10p - which aren't healing. Cary last night was trying to walk but his legs wouldn't obey him. This has happened before. We were told this is something that happens to some cats occasionally - they go to sleep, and when they wake up, part of them doesn't wake up as quickly, and it isn't anything to worry too much about. However, in the past its only happened to his back legs, and only every six months or so. This time his front legs weren't working either, and Claire was worried about his face muscles, and this is the second time in under a month. (But then again, this morning he was chasing blackbirds...) I'm pretty sure that both cats have nothing to worry about, but they're both off to the vets tomorrow morning to make sure.

So, I have a houseful of sick and injured animals. I keep waiting for Rolf Harris to turn up.

Posted by graham @ 01:12 pm

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Garden Party, New Doctor Who Arguments

Yesterday was pretty successful. Nick, Caroline, Kai, Andy and Fiona worked like troopers, sacrificing their time and energy to the noble cause of moving three tonnes of soil (after sieving stones, etc. out) from bags in the front garden to a pretty good approximation of the new vegetable patch. All of which we inadequately repaid with home-made pizzas and copious quantities of cheap wine. Everything was finished in plenty of time to watch the latest Doctor Who (on which more below) before heading pub-wards.

WARNING - The below contains a number of spoilers for Doctor Who stories, both recent and dim and distant. Don't read on if you don't want to know.

I got dragged into a strange conversation in the pub last night. Apparently not everyone is enjoying the new Doctor Who - which is fair enough, I suppose. The reasons puzzled me though - somewhere between "its changed too much" and "the plot makes no sense".

I started watching the new series expecting to see changes. The producers owe no loyalty to the continuity-obsessed fan boys, and the program has never exactly paid attention to its own back-story anyway. (Three different endings for Atlantis, two for the Daleks...) I've been surprised how little has changed - a re-done Tardis being about the *only* significant difference so far. I have to wonder if those who think it's changed ever saw the original series at all. Let me refute a few concerns :

"The Doctor is a pacifist. He wouldn't fight in a war."

The Doctor attempted genocide against the Daleks on at least three occasions ("The Daleks", "Evil of the Daleks", "Genesis of the Daleks"). Just about every single Cyberman storyline ends with the Doctor destroying their fleet/ship/invasion force - in one case after deliberately leading them into a trap so he could do that ("Silver Nemesis").

"Too much comedy."

Ill-advised attempts at comedy go back to the first Doctor - many of the historicals for instance, but also examples like Jamie's highland fling from "Macra Terror". The third Doctor was where they started to get it right, with comedy coming more from the characters than the situation - exchanges between the Doctor & Jo Grant are a good example. By the fourth Doctor we had out and out comedy shows ("Pirate Planet"). Let alone nonsense like "The Happiness Patrol"...

"Social Commentary"

Or more accurately "political satire". The "45 seconds" quote got enormous round of laughter here, but apparently this was an unwelcome intrusion for some, regarding it as unwelcome topicalism. Better steer clear of "The Green Death", "Vengeance on Varos", "Paradise Towers", "Galaxy 4", or, indeed, most of the rest of the series.

"The Doctor cares too much for his companion."

Bollocks. This is absolutely normal, with the Doctor regarding most of his companions as substitutes for the granddaughter he left on Earth. See scenes like the endings of "Curse of Fenric" or "The Hand of Fear", or the beginning of "Time-flight" for examples. Not to mention "The Dalek Invasion of Earth".

"Doctor's apparent omniscience."

I don't get this. At all. First episode, *I* could have told you that walking shop dummies meant the Nestene Consciousness, and I haven't fought it twice before. Second episode, the Doctor finds out what's going on by re-programming a robot to return to its master. Third, he gets it wrong. Huh?

"Vinegar."

Dissolving calcium in vinegar is silly, but dissolving Cybermen in nail polish remover isn't? ("The Moonbase") Jury rigging a weapon against monster of the week is pretty standard in Doctor Who. (Although I think the "name that planet" bit may have been a mistake, over-shadowing the basic chemistry behind the idea.)

And on to plot problems :

"You can't wipe out a time-travelling race."

Okay, forget killing your grandfather, the interesting paradox is this : If you travel into the future, learn how you die, then return to your own time, can you avoid your own death? There's two possible answers here. In a linear model of time travel, no, you can't. The attempt to prevent the prophecy that Oedipus would kill has father and marry his mother results in Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother. There are interesting stories to be told in such a universe, but the Greeks told most of them a couple of thousand years ago. The alternative is the paradoxical universe - yes, you can. The universe doesn't care if time changes, since it is huge, and the paradoxes are small. Doctor Who is explicitly within this universe - for instance, "World War Three" has the Doctor displaying knowledge of the future, but still being worried as to whether he can save the planet. For more on this, go read the latest Schlock Mercenary storyline.

So, can you wipe out a time-travelling race? Of course - especially one that resolutely stays on one planet. Blow up Gallifrey, no more Time Lords. Oh, they existed in the past (for some personal meaning of "past") but they don't anymore. And since they never use their powers of time travel, there aren't even many of them around to meet up with. Not only is this consistent with established canon, its pretty much the plot of "The Invasion of Time". The Doctor can't change this - he presumably tried and failed ("I couldn't save any of them!") and only the Time Lords (who don't exist now) have the power to let him have another try. ("Three Doctors", "Five Doctors".) So, the Time Lords are as dead as Adric, and there's nothing that can be done.

And anyway, last of a dying race is way cooler than half-human...

All of which isn't to say the series doesn't have problems. The one-off episodes (presumably aimed at the alleged shorter attention span of the American market) don't have time to tell an interesting story. So, episode 1 was rushed and fan-boyish (3/5), episode 2 overly silly with little plot (3/5), episode 3 boringly predictable (3/5, but only for Dickens, otherwise 2/5). Only the two-parter has approached the high points of the past, with wit, interesting plot, and time to tell the story and establish characters (4/5). Hopefully there'll be more like this in the next series...

Posted by graham @ 11:25 am

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Gardening

Some of you might remember the saga of the soil - essentially we ordered three tonnes of top quality top soil and got three tonnes of primarily sand and rubbish. We've finally settled with the credit card company, who have paid enough for us to buy a tonne of farm manure and compost to improve the soil enough to be usable. So this last weekend we did a test sieve, added some compost, and managed to produce something fairly decent. This coming weekend we have a few friends coming round to help. Rough plan is to dig over the existing soil where the new vegetable beds are going, sieve rocks out of the "soil", mix in compost and manure, and then dig into the existing soil. Finally, smooth, trample, repeat as necessary. With half a dozen of us, hopefully we'll manage to get some sort of pipeline going.

After all that work, we'll reward people with home-made pizza and alcohol, then watch a few DVDs - probably the new Farscape series. Anyone wanting to join us for DVDs is very welcome, but please bring a bottle.

Posted by graham @ 09:33 am

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

No great surprises here

I'm back from holiday, I'm alive, I'm slowly catching up on everything that needs done. I won't, however, be posting much over the next month or so - far too much real stuff to do.

I did notice this little test on John Kovalic's blog - and was intrigued enough to fill out the form.

Who should I vote for?

Labour -10
Conservative -69
	Liberal Democrat 96
UK Independence Party -24
	Green 47

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Posted by graham @ 02:57 pm

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