2 April
Everything’s going to be fine. Nothing to worry about at all. All a bit of an over reaction. We’ll be fine.
Have moved into L’s spare room until it is all over. This will probably be good for our sanity.
Long review of terrible Doctor Who story. Start rewatching Brain of Morbius (a Tom Baker story) which is sillier than I remember.
IDEA: Sword and Sorcery series about hero named Brian who comes from land of Morbius.
Interesting that Simon Jenkins piece in the Grauniad, expressing some skepticism about some aspects of the Virus Response, said essentially the same things that some of the Crazy Nasty people have been saying, but in temperate language. (There are different medical opinions about how serious things could get and how quickly; the government is assuming the worst; as a lay person there is no way of assessing which of a number of a dissenting expert opinions is likely to be correct.) But that’s the point, isn’t it? A liberal paper publishes a piece which says “Gee, I have some questions about some of what we are being told. Who can help me out?” A conservative paper publishes pierces which say “EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW IS WRONG — FACT! BECAUSE COMMIES.” Which is of course why the conservatives win the argument every time.
Can anyone find that old clip from “The Day Today” about the terrorist bomb in the old folks home? “46 residents were killed, but they were old and would have died soon anyway.”
Final episode of Picard great fun, but I pity all the people who are going to have to re-play the ending using Star Fleet Battles. Quite surprised that some people objected to the “death is what gives meaning to life” speech at the end. Seems to me that Picard, like Discovery, did a very good job of meandering away from the expected tone and themes of Star Trek and then reasserted them very strongly in the final episode. The Federation can look corrupt for a while, but by the end of the story we have to be back in Space Utopia. Because it’s Star Trek.
Interesting that the organic android body is referred to as a golem. One of the names on the credits is Michael Chabon, whose long novel Kavalier and Clay is very much concerned with the myth of the golem.
Everything is fine.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I have been criticising Simon Jenkins since before he was Richard Dawkins, specifically since about 2010, when he said that the reason why we have terrorist bombings is that we hold big events like the 2012 Olympics which encourages them to attack. In this case, he doesn't say 'because commies', but he does end up saying the same sort of thing as the Crazy Nasty People, that scientists don't agree so nobody knows what to do. Ironically, the main news outlet which takes this forward to 'so nothing works, don't worry, do your own thing' is Russia Today. By contrast, the actual right-wing newspapers like the Mail and the Sun are howling for more testing and more hospital beds.
Curiously, a long-established tactic of Russian propaganda is not just come up with one lie and stick to it, but a whole set of lies. None of them have to be especially convincing in themselves. However, they create the impression that there are lots of different ideas, and and no single set of facts that you have to agree on. I suspect that Kevin would come up with similar stories about climate change denial: it is not so much a certainty as a deliberate undermining of certainties.
Post a Comment