Except, you know... we do. It's just that, rather like any other worthwhile intellectual endeavour, the process of enquiry is ongoing and the answers that get generated along the way don't close it off. One wonders exactly when the Scientists will submit their own 'answer' .... unless, of course, it actually is 42, in which case I hereby answer on behalf of the Humanities: 43.

Piled Higher and Deeper can be forgiven though: when you stereotype something this badly, you must be in on the joke. Or, alternatively, far too stupid to produce a comic this funny. I could, of course, regard this sort of lambasting as a natural and largely good-natured reaction to pop-culture's eventual exposure to some of the sillier excesses of late twentieth century theory and its thrilling, but ultimately incoherent, championing of a ridiculously universal relativism and pluralism, itself brought about by disenchantment with the grand narratives and progressivist teleologies that appeared less and less tenable after the West started substituting egg for eyeliner in the wake of the cold war. But that can't possibly be a useful way of understanding the phenomenon.... I mean... how would you test it in a lab / with a questionnaire?

To be fair, the other side of the barricades are also occasionally represented:



No more PhD Comic posts today. I promise.

http://www.explosm.net/comics/1912/

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic.

http://padsprogress.blogspot.com/2010/01/and-now-for-something-completly.html

Mostly I just post about the stuff happening in my life for the benefit of those who may give a crap and/or for nosy bar stewards who insist on the odd insight here and there. Does my twitter not feed that enough?

Incidentally, public twitter found here: http://twitter.com/padpadme, though it's mostly boring work related items.

Rarely do I post random thoughts, but I thought I would copy and paste from Facebook here as it got me thinking.

In reference to last nights trend for posting bra colour to facebook:

I know that some who have have done the race for life and probably have given,. but there are a fair number who have no idea whats going and are doing it simply because others are. If it's an exercise in raising awareness, it's a rubbish one and I would rather put my money where my mouth is then follow the crowd.

There's also my personal beliefs that there are more urgent causes on the planet. How many who posted the bra colours know about the dire poverty and starvation going on in Afghan at the moment?

Sure hearts in right places and all that, but without tedious facebook exercises like that, how many of them would actually sit down and consider other political and chartiible causes?

Incidentally, I'm wearing a pearly white Freya number that supports and flatters my rather ample bosum.

But yes, why would anyone assume I was talking Breast Cancer Awareness from that? As a Web Developer with a keen interest on useability of web sites and applications, I did wonder what the hell people were thinking. I had to crawl resources to find out why so what would some other, less net-savvy user do?

I suppose the reason it stoked my ire was because it reminded me of those silly chain emails that ask you to forward them so that charity X gets $1 or some such nonsense. That there are no way that companies can track such things and that some people do these things without real thought.

Support causes, but actually give it some consideration. Please?

http://www.bunny-comic.com/1453.html

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad could be here, right now.

As predicted, THE CAT helped with homework (whilst wishing he was outside), had a look at my beautiful wildlife photographer of the year book and then came out to play in the snow (which he actually found a bit scary.... by 9am it was deeper than he is tall!)

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/loved/entry/new_podcast/

So sometime in 2008, Anna and I did a podcast. Well now there is another one. Of it.

The Lowman and Love Podcast – Episode 2

It sounds pretty good, there’s still some hiss and a few annoying peaks, mostly as everything I learned about editing podcasts 18 months ago I’ve now forgot.

Show notes below, and apologies for neglecting the blog of late, am planning a “TV shows of the Decade” mega-feature, but need to decide what they are first.

TV
Psychoville
The Thick of It
Californication
Life
Ashes To Ashes
Dexter

Theatre
Jerusalem

Music
The Duckworth-Lewis Method
Frank Turner
Gavin Osborn

Comedy
Mark Watson
Tim Key
Stewart Lee
David O’Doherty
Tim Minchin

Doctor Who

All music by How To Swim

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AbstruseGoose/~3/faDUsTtvA_Q/230

http://abstrusegoose.com/230

By request, there’s a new T-shirt in the store.

Okay, so, Christmas started a while before Christmas and hasn't quite ended yet. Or it didn't happen. You know, your choice.

I had an entertaining weekend just before Christmas which started with Helen's birthday on December the 18th. I went along to her place to have dinner with Helen's family on that Friday night and had a fitful night of "sleep" before the following morning, upon which I struggled to Oxford station and made my way speedily back to Enfield to take part in the annual Feast of St Cinemus. I watched:

G-Force [4/5]
Planet 51 [3/5]
A Christmas Carol [4/5]

At which point I needed to abandon the Feast. I later learned that the Feasters had to abandon their plan and watch a mere six films, one less than the last three years, in order to guarantee a showing of Avatar.

I made my way back to Oxford to go to Helen's second birthday gathering, this time with her friends. This was both odd (because I've never seen them all in the same place before) and strange (because Haz was missing; she's in Japan, or something). This was followed by another night in Helen's house, only this time Angela (a QMUL friend) and her boyfriend Peter were occupying Ed's room, Emma and Helen were sharing her room, and I was left to sleep on a futon on Bob's floor with a fan heater next to me turned up to high. Surprisingly, I didn't get much sleep.

I returned on Monday to find that in a couple of days all the parts for the Sing Back Knightmare song had arrived in my inbox. I had "fun" piecing them all together. Allegedly.

I went with Alan and his girlfriend Claire to Broadcasting House in order to see The Now Show. I had a great time, saw Mitch Benn for the second time, and Steve Punt read out my response to the audience question. I didn't hear the final recording, sadly, and my mother tells me that my response was cut from it. But at least he read it out and I finally went to see The Now Show, so it was a good choice. Afterwards, Alan, Claire and I went to a really weird restaurant called Abracadabra, where the entire evening was taken over by a fraças concerning pre-teens taking drugs and suchandsuch. It was past midnight when I got home and I was still slightly confused.

Not much happened for a few days until my family took me to the annual Millfield pantomime, which I don't recall agreeing to go to. I also don't recall Helen agreeing to go, but we went along anyway. Since the last time I went to the Millfield was for the gig we played there, I haven't seen the place for ages, much less been into the theatre, so we saw a new bar area had been constructed. This was strange. I ordered two hot chcoolates, which were both unpalatable. Typical Millfield fare. The pantomime was okay, though, which is perhaps the first time I've said that (the one I saw at the age of fifteen with the beautiful fairy notwithstanding). I'm not entirely going to forgive a white Aladdin with a black mother though. I don't think that's physically possible - he should have at least been mixed-race.

The day after that we struggled back to Oxford hauling a huge trunk and there ensued the strangest Christmas I've ever had - also the smallest, with a mere seven people - which is large for them, with their five members, but tiny for me because mine have reached up to sixteen. For comparison:

A Typical Pooka Christmas
Tom, Harriet, Emily, Katie, Rosie, Pooka, Jane, Howard, Julia, Bob, Bev, Al, Ivy, Arthur, Maggie, Bert.

A Typical Helen Christmas
Bob, Helen, Ed, Joy, Mike.

Add me and Sarah (Ed's girlfriend) to the mix and we have seven. There are a lot of girlfriends cropping up in this post for some reason.

We went to a Church of England service at Christchurch Cathedral at midnight, followed by an Anglican service at Binsey Church in the morning. Since I'm URC I didn't really take either of these as close to my heart as I probably should have done, but Christchurch is an amazingly picturesque cathedral, so I got to see it from the inside for the first time and it's a mighty place. I didn't appreciate the sombre attitude of both churches, though; we hardly sang that many carols and the vicar's speech at Binsey derided A Christmas Carol, which displeased us all. We didn't sing O Come All Ye Faithful either, although we did sing it in the car on the way back.

Sarah got the Michael McIntryre DVD for Christmas and we'd finished watching it before lunch actually happened. Helen's father chose to enter the room right at the point wherein McIntyre started talking about blowjobs. Laughter had to be done behind hands, which were quickly put into use eating lunch. (Nice segue there, Pooka!) Which was delicious. We then played a music game, watched James May do something with trains, played Villiad The Imploder, and ate dinner, which was delicious.

We also watched Doctor Who at some point. I spent a long time explaining stuff to Helen, most of which was explaining that I had no idea either.

Christmas sort of petered out after that. Unlike my family Christmases, there wasn't a definitive end point, where everyone leaves Nanna's house. It was comforting, in a way, but also slightly disconcerting for someone who's been used to the same thing since birth. A comfortable Christmas. Cosy. Warm. Small. Quiet. It's not what I'm used to. But I enjoyed it. I'm sad to say that I did, at one point, cry. But it's not the first time I've cried at Christmas.

Current Mood: recumbent
Current Music: Alphaville - Forever Young

They're all featured in this book, of course!

Originally posted on jentastical.vox.com

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=518

back

buy this print digg facebook reddit stumbleupon

next

Sometimes it's rather obvious when a programme or film is trying to appeal to more than one level of audience member. For instance, Star Trek: First Contact aims to catch hardcore Star Trek fans who can handle all the technobabble and obscure references under Sol, and general sci-fi enthusiasts, and those who just want an exciting movie - as exemplified during the scene where the Starship Enterprise is pursuing a spherical enemy spaceship which begins to generate a green haze:

Lieutenant Commander Data: Sir, sensors show chronometric particles emanating from the sphere's hull.

Captain Picard: They're creating a temporal vortex!

Commander Riker: [Rising from his chair] Time travel.

That said, I do think First Contact succeeds. It remains my favourite Star Trek film, and I'd like to think that someone who isn't a fan could enjoy it as much as I do. The Radio Times gives it five stars.

CSI, too, tries to catch viewers at both ends of the spectrum in less-than-subtle ways. In many an episode, the medical examiner will stand over a corpse and declare that "Cause of death was exsanguination. [Pause] She bled out." Maybe you have noticed this. It happened in an repeat shown on five last night.

Another episode repeated last night was one I'd watched before, but I'd forgotten that it contains what I regard as the worst CSI moment ever. The characters are searching a suspect's house. Grissom is bouncing on a loose floorboard. Catherine has found a silver menorah in a drawer, and takes it out.

Catherine: Shabbat Shalom!

Captain Brass: [With a baffled look] Jewish?

By coincidence, Five repeated the Grissom-Langston handover episodes on the same night as BBC One showed the 10th-11th Doctor Who handover episode. If Tennant <=> Grissom, then Eccleston <=> Keppler (which suits my appreciation of both)... and Smith <=> Langston?

My last couple of days haven't been anything like this:

Current Music: The Atomic Bitchwax - Ice Pick Freak [Live] | Powered by Last.fm

Weee, no work for me today! We're not even open so I don't have to feel guilty about not making it in. Instead I have gone out and taken lots of pretty pictures of the snow with my shiny camera.

( Snow )

Tags: doggy, kitty, photography, pony, snow, weather, work, yay
Current Mood: relaxed

http://www.explosm.net/comics/1913/

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic.

http://xkcd.com/685/

And it's not the snow!

I'm starting a new photography project called

THE CAT


When it wasn't Catmas on the 2nd, my lovely husband bought me an adoreable toy cat. He is called The Cat .

I am going to take as many pictures as I can of The Cat over the next year in different places, doing different things! It will be a minimum of 100 images or diptych/triptychs.

CAT 1


CAT 2


CAT 3



I have a feeling The Cat is going to go for a play in the snow tomorrow....... and maybe help me with some work......

Comedy gold

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2667/4244858134_2bbd540ca0_o.jpg

http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2010/01/st-johns-wart-and-boots-chemist.html

Boots, like many other retailers, is flogging St John's Wort on the internet. Doctors are horrified at the way these drugs are targeted at vulnerable people. Can it ever be right to entice these vulnerable people to buy anti-depressants by promising "96 points" and making a "buy two, get one free" offer? This is medication, not soap powder. Boots should be ashamed of themselves.

See St John's Wort will not cure Mary's marriage in the Guardian

http://buttersafe.com/2010/01/05/the-guy-who-could-fart-through-his-nose/