Hoped for Connor MacLeod, got Para Handy

Could be the story of my life!

The much heralded Gathering took place in Edinburgh this weekend and by all accounts was a terrific event. When I first heard the title of this Homecoming event naturally, I pictured Christopher Lambert in his most gorgeous and best role – Highlander! The actual Gathering 2009, was more Scottish than the Scots and was aimed at attracting the Diaspora, rather than indigenous fantasy fans. Sword dances rather than supernatural sword fights.
http://www.clangathering.org/

Escaping this crushing disappointment, I headed to Glasgow. The Clyde was full of vessels, civil and naval, both old and new. The sword-fighting theme persisted, with pirate ships booming canons and swashing their buckles in front of the BBC building next to the Glasgow Science Centre.
Then I spotted the Vital Spark. Oh bliss, such memories of the Para Handy stories and the original programmes of my childhood. However, I'm told that some idiot wiped the tapes of the old programmes. Not all is lost as the remakes are fine, proving that it is not always the case that there can be only one!

http://www.parahandy.tv/

http://www.neilmunro.co.uk/

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Para_Handy

Disappointed for decades

Forty years ago, someone walked on the moon. A select few followed in subsequent moon landings then it all went quiet. Plenty of satellites and other person-free objects have been launched into space, especially on behalf of the military/industrial complex. They don’t seem to need permission from an earth-tied population to spend copious amounts of money. They just commit grand theft of our taxes and spend it on boy’s toys to float around spying on everyone or various other competitive willy waving exploits to the benefit of no one, except the aforementioned military/industrial complex (and their immoral shareholders).

The few useful scientific experiments carried out in space are fine, but where would we have been had space exploration kept up the early progress that put these brave souls up there 40 years ago. Just compare the rapid development of mobile phones since the 1980’s and the way those have been transformed from plastic bricks to the weird and wonderful variety, we have now. So, I firmly believe humankind could have taken an incredible journey in these 40 years had equivalent money been spent on getting us out of this gravity well and into the solar system, that was squandered in killing various populations across this planet.

Where were you when those historic pictures were beamed back to sitting rooms on Sol Three? I have clear memories of being allowed to stay up to watch this. I was optimistic of witnessing helmeted humans lumbering around on the moon and being gobbled up by moon monsters. I was beyond upset that nothing alien ate them. I’ve gotten over that disappointment and can see that meeting characters like the delightfully tusked demoiselle above, might not have encouraged space exploration. I do not believe we are ever going to be visited by an advanced species who will save us from ourselves. This is a common theme of much science fiction, but in reality, we have to become adults who can make their own decisions and not look to space (or other) gods to save us.

My other assumption on seeing the moon landing is that I would grow up and go into space. This was not a career aspiration to be an astronaut merely that we’d all be living and working in space or on other planets. I realise that this was optimistic and that a few decades was not going to produce anything Star Fleet would recognise, but I was hopeful as a child that science could do anything.

I remain disappointed that none of these expectations was ever met. In the way that I had grown up and accepted in young adulthood that I had run out of time to become a child prodigy, I approached middle age only occasionally railing against the fact that going into space was never to be my reality. However, I have a longer-term plan. It is now fairly easy to have a gram or two of one’s ashes sent into space, and the cost is reducing all the time as it becomes more popular. Try an online search for this and see how many organisations are offering this.

All three images were culled from this really fun site ...

http://picture-book.com/

Sexist split infinitive

Those who are unapologetic, nay, proud to label themselves Trekkies will automatically identify the subject of this post from the title. Those of us who formerly bashfully called ourselves Trekkers, will also have an inkling of what is to come.*

While the terminally pedantic will point out that the whole split infinitive argument is … er, well, I lost the will to live long enough to decipher whether it is a split infinitive, or if the whole split infinitive discussion is sooooo 2 centuries ago, and none of that matters now, so just make up your own mind. Whatever it is, it is sexist, which might have been almost excusable in the 60’s when ST:TOS** originated, but not in 2009. Of course, another search aspect during which I lost the will to live was to ascertain if the (potential split infinitive warning) “Boldly going where no man has gone before”, is actually used in the new film or not. Much more egalitarian and inclusive is “Boldly going where no sentient being has ever gone before” at least it is in my equalities overloaded cranium where split infinitives take a negative warp-factor 10 backseat to politically correct grammar.

This dismal excuse for blogging about the new ST film is so that I can nit-pick about the lack of female characters in contrast with Rodenberry’s very first pilot where Majel Barrett was first officer and the (for the time) groundbreaking casting of Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) in the first series. I noted in a previous blog that Majel Barrett lived long enough to record her customary role as computer voice in this (possibly) final ST film outing, but it appears that otherwise female roles are scarce this time round. Feminists will readily acknowledge that this is more evidence that in some key areas, women’s progress towards fully recognised humanity has been put into reverse in comparison to 40 years ago. That’s a blog for some future date.

One of the first accidental discoveries I made when going online in the early 90’s was that ST:TOS mainly, but also other parts of the franchise, were mainstays of the burgeoning slash fiction genre. I’d first encountered this phenomenon courtesy of Joanna Russ in an academic essay on Kirk/Spock zines in the 80’s but had not read any. Call me fussy, but after a memorable afternoon reading quantities of this online I’ve never bothered again. And the purist in me cannot cope with crossover slash fiction. That would be where enthusiasts mix their series or genre and have stories in which say Highlander meets Buffy. Just not my idea of entertainment. If none of this is making sense, then you really need to further your education at this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_fiction

To continue this theme. Jean-Luc Picard and Gandalf were performing together in Edinburgh last week. Apparently, this was not crossover slash but some boring play by some boring boy playwright. They were joined by the bloke who died in a kilt in that film “Four Weddings and a Hugh Grant”. Still, apparently not slash.
http://www.list.co.uk/event/89151-waiting-for-godot/

If you are still mystified by all this or have thus far managed to avoid the whole ST franchise, then this link takes you to as good a review of the film as any. Of course, I’ve not yet seen the film, but that will be rectified when it arrives in Edinburgh.
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/showbiz/23740-new-star-trek-is-a-superbly-entertaining-return-to-its-tv-origins

*OMG!!!!!!!! I did a Word spell check and discovered that Microsoft (at least on my comp) corrects Trekkies to Trekkers – you just know what this says about Microsoft employees.

** Jargon buster for the wilfully untrekked
ST:TOS – Star Trek, the original series
ST:TNG – The Next Generation
And so on and so forth.

“He’s deid captain, stane deid, nae pulse…”
http://digg.com/d1A3Q0

Just appreciate …
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8822/nichelle.html

Women’s Evolution

It’s the birthday of one of the blokes who did some thinking on evolution. As is normal in major leaps forward in human thinking, Darwin was just the first or at least the best able to get his name attached to the idea that the earth was old and organisms evolved. Many others were heading towards that conclusion. None of the names I’ve seen mentioned were of women - can’t imagine why.

Avoiding any controversy about creationism and evolution for the moment, I’d rather mention the work of Elaine Morgan and her Aquatic Ape theory which has bubbled around for some time.
She is an interesting person and this link contains an interview with her in 2003.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2003/may/01/academicexperts.highereducation
This link provides more info: http://www.primitivism.com/aquatic-ape.htm

Less well known is the work of Evelyn Reed who in her book Woman’s Evolution takes on the drivel of male anthropologists in their theories of primitive people, which tend to be male-centric and unquestioning of patriarchal norms.

http://www.angelfire.com/pr/red/feminism/challenge_of_the_matriarchy.htm
http://www.word-power.co.uk/books/womans-evolution-I9780873484220/

I am too busy right now to give this the biting rantolicious treatment it deserves so leave it up to anyone interested to look into why evolution is a flawed but inherently scientific theory and the damage leaving it to patriarchal scientists to develop has done to women’s position in society – evolutionary biologists/psychologists and the inexcusable biological determinists anyone??

OK, to return to the creationists in the name of shared airtime or some such pseudo equality nonsense ...

I had a chemistry lecturer who was a creationist long before it became fashionable to spout young earth theory/beliefs/delusions. I'm very annoyed with my non-hoarding tendencies because only a few years ago I threw out copies of his publicity on this subject. From memory, these were information sheets explaining how oil was made in a young earth/creationist scientific way. I think it involved huge amounts of pressure on vegetable matter in a short space of time in comparison to the billions of years of leetle teeny beasties being squashed under layers of rock. I suspect coal got the same treatment, but with pressure on trees in a speeded up timeframe.

My chemistry lecturer was a really nice chap, but a tad earnest in his scientific/creationist views, although he was meticulous in not mentioning these in lectures and chose instead to set out his stall in the foyer at lunch times and spoke only to those who approached him on the subject. That I can respect as he did not force the educational establishment to include his version of science and faithfully taught chemistry as it was intended.

There are some who reject the usual scientific theory of oil creation and the creationists and have found their own ideas. I'm tempted to give them a cheer for their 'plague on all your houses' attitude. Theirs is the abiogenic origin of petroleum deposits.

http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/1130.html

And what do I believe? I'm certainly not a creationist, so I suppose I go along with the broad outline of evolution as far as my understanding takes me. However, I was exposed at a sensitive age to yet another concept and some of that has remained lodged in the wishful thinking section of my consciousness. Yes, we were seeded on earth by aliens! Well, probably not, but having read my way through early Von Daniken books and far too much science fiction for my own good, I have a wistful hankering for the presence of alien DNA in my mitochondria.

Forty five years of proselytising and only 10,000 acolytes. What's he doing wrong?

http://www.daniken.com/e/index.html

SFX for the Cardinal

I often admit that my mind is affected by the quantity and quality of the science fiction I read. But it does mean that medical experiments and ‘life sciences’ do not phase me – much!

Prolonged reading about cloning, aliens and future fantasy societies means that I’m likely to be more open to modifying humans than those who freak out at the thought of cloning.

Conversely, maybe even perversely, I am not in favour of GM crops. This is because while we can elect (maybe eventually) to clone ourselves, this is going to be limited and unlike crops, individual humans cannot be released into the atmosphere to pollute existing strains of crops. Or at least not without some even more far-fetched scenarios a la Boys from Brazil. However, I wonder if that is what our own home-grown auld boy in a frock is thinking when he considers life sciences?

I feel it would do everyone a huge favour if the Cardinal was given a lifetime subscription to SFX, the science fiction magazine.

http://www.sfx.co.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(film)