Current batch of unwritten posts

[cdave]

I'm fully aware of the fact that coherent reasonably well thought entries look better than yet another list of things I did't find time to write about in the last 2 weeks.

• Been on an SF reading splurge.


• Nation by Terry Pratchett
• The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl
• Teranesia by Greg Egan
• The Atrocity Archives by Charlie Stross
• Necessary Evil by Joshua Williamson (artist Marcus L Harris)


• agaj-d reminded me of applying Bechdel's law to literature. These books all have strong female characters but, off the top of my head, I think only Nation passes. I'm not even completely sure about that.
• Saw Marine Express by Osamu Tezuka. An odd mainstrean 80's kids anime film.


• Occasional gorgeous things, like a fishing machine, that chews.
• Weird sequences, like some viscous looking sharks that get out of breath, and collapse into cartoons.
• And huge plot twists which just completely change the nature of the story.
• Knitted a tiny hat. Don't click. I look daft.
• Farah Mendlesohn talks at the BSFA. She's always worth listening to. Any panel I've ever seen her on has been a great one. All quotes are paraphrased.


• "History as a mode of seeing the world"


• or, history teaches you how tools on how to learn using what other people have written about.
• There a post in there about why I took History GSCE rather than Geography
• "People who write about how to get kids to read don't write about the pleasure of simply reading. The act of allowing text to flow past your eyes. Even reading something like the back of a tin of beans."


• My default "if there's nothing else I read the the back of" is "a shampoo bottle."
• iBon thought "cigarette packet"
• Hmm, I should do a poll.
• "People say kids hate being preached at. They're wrong. Teenagers hate being preached at. Kids love it."


• This links to the second to last paragraph in Farah's fanish origin story.
• It's the old thing of scientists being kids who never grew out of asking questions. I ought to get my thoughts together on this and try write something coherent.
• Went to a lecture on the first treaty between Japan and Britain


• It was given by a retired British ambassador to Japan, Sir Hugh Cortazzi
• He started by saying he suggested opening the 150 year anniversary with a lecture on the original treaty. Somehow he'd wound up having to do it, despite his lack of powerpoint skills. And as a punishment for attending we'd all have to take a copy of the 90 page book he'd written on it, trying to put this speech togther


• He was ace.
• Given that we understood so little of their culture, and the whole negotiation was translated from English, to Dutch, to Japanese and back (as neither nation spoke each others language), and a there was opposition from factions in Japan, it was amazing it happened at all, let alone how quick it all happened.

Comments

[idaho-smith.livejournal.com]

RE: Bechdel's law

I'm working through Nation myself.
I had a e-girlfriend once who whinged that the heroes in any media are *always* a trio of two boys & one girl and then went onto deconstruct the gender-roles within the team.

A few years ago someone (probably wikipedia) told me that "Laurence of Arabia" is the only film with with no female speaking roles (perhaps that should be major film) and thus fail all three critera.
I've had a go at finding another film that is girl-free, naturally military films seem to come closest, but "Das Boot" and "Paths of Glory" have a bit with a female singer 'entertaining the troops' and Master & Commader has a S.American girl in a canoe who says something inaudiable in spanish or portuguese although she isn't subtitled.

[idaho-smith.livejournal.com]

The should be ex-girlfriend btw - d'oh!

e-girlfriend :)

[cdave]

D0 U Cy|3er?

Ahem.

I've had a not very through flick through Nation and I'm even less sure.

The only recorded conversation between two human females that I found was about a male (page 222).

Re: e-girlfriend :)

[(Anonymous)]

D'oh, guess I should have deleted & re-written.

I'll keep my eyes open in the rest of "Nation" (I'm still only halfway through), but if you consider the words of the girl's grandmother, would that not count as a flashback based around a woman-to-woman lecture, or does a tirade about "maintaining standards" not quite count as a conversation?

Re: e-girlfriend :)

[cdave]

Hmm. I'd forgot there was an actual flashback. That's a definite pass then. Regardless of if I'd forgotten what happened next.

[idaho-smith.livejournal.com]

Found it! Peter "LOTR-Trilogy" Jackson's first film, "Bad Taste" has only 5 actors, all men in it.

[cdave]

Well remembered!

Hmm. First movies seem likely to be just as rich pickings as military movies. As the budget, and therefore cast will likely be so much smaller.

[idaho-smith.livejournal.com]

Have you seen it? I was reminded of it last night while watching part of king-kong. Saw it a few years ago and thought it was hilarious!

[cdave]

Unfortunately not. I've heard good things about the earlier Peter Jackson movies, but haven't got around to tracking them down.

[idaho-smith.livejournal.com]

And another - "Hell in the Pacific"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_in_the_pacific

[idaho-smith.livejournal.com]

Here's another all-boy film for you, as brought to us by Film-four+1 after home-time today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogmen

BTW, Did you used to get people writing Gibberish in foriegn in you comment boxes? Be Afraid!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
"Blog-Steganography. Messages are fractionalized and the (encrypted) pieces are added as comments of orphaned web-logs (or pin boards on social network platforms). In this case the selection of blogs is the symmetric key that sender and recipient are using; the carrier of the hidden message is the whole blogosphere."

[cdave]

It's almost certainly not that, as it hits blogs which screen all comments, so the message fragments never get seen by anyone but the blog owner.

Then again stranger things have happened. A key point in the Doctorow/Rosenbaum novella True Names involves a very clever use of spam messages to sneak a message out.