@nerys

It is the difference between reading a novel which you may enjoy but, at the end, feel there is nothing more to be learned from a second reading because everything is there on the surface, and reading one which you immediately want to read again because you know that, however much you have understood and gained from that first reading…[Read more]

@ichabod

There was a six part BBC adaptation of The City and the City early this year, although I only recently got round to watching it. It diverged in some respects from the novel, giving Borlu a back story and an additional motive in the form of a wife who had disappeared, and greater prominence to the archaeological excavations. What made the…[Read more]

@pedant

Ouch!  and commiserations about this additional sideswipe by the fates; but excellent news about the blood sugar levels 🙂

Fingers crossed that the aches and pains will not trouble you for long.

@pedant

Thank me later.

Or curse you, more like 😈

@KevinWho

It is probably asking too much of Chibnall to hope he will come up with something wildly imaginative; that isn’t his strongest suit 😉  Moffat had an almost limitless imagination and a willingness to take risks which made even his less successful episodes interesting. It is significant that Rosa is the only episode in this season that…[Read more]

@thane16

On the evidence you should do well, although if the person doing the assessment isn’t really qualified to teach the subject, what is their assessment worth?  Either way you cannot lose 🙂

Once the basic tools have been imparted the overriding purpose of education is surely to teach the student how to think critically, and from that p…[Read more]

@KevinWho

The grounds for your reservations about the episode are valid, but I’m not sure that the nuances of the psychological and sociological roots of racism in Montgomery in the 1950s could ever have been adequately addressed in one 50 minute episode of a show intended for family viewing and aimed primarily, in this case, at an audience of…[Read more]

Did my eyes deceive me, or was the Doctor’s jumper purple in this episode, and if so and not a trick of the lighting, what is the significance. Over to you, @Juniperfish .

The episode was entertaining and as visually impressive as the first four, but the overall impression after first viewing is that, although it contained plenty of good things, the tone seemed a bit uneven and I’m not sure that the component elements really meshed together to form an integrated whole.  I agree with @Juniperfish that the real…[Read more]

@idiotsavon  @LionHeart564

Even if the nuances escape those of us not indigenous to Africa, there tend to be obvious differences in build and facial features between people from West African Countries and those from East and North East Africa.

Fun fact, which you may already be aware of: modern studies of DNA show that there is a much more…[Read more]

@thane16

I am probably the last person to consult on matters of philosophy, having never studied the subject except at the most superficial level. That said, when I read of your philosophy assignment the first thing that occurred to me was, how do you define the terms fundamental to the argument? Logical argument depends on the premise, and what…[Read more]

@LionHeart564   @Miapatrick

Discussion of whether health care is better provided by the private sector or by a socialised system such as the NHS, funded by taxation and free at the point of service, is particularly complicated when it comes to comparing China and the UK. On one level it is, as you say, a matter of scale. The UK is geographically…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip  – and others

No doubt I will regret diving into this debate, and there is a small and not at all admirable part of me which whispers, ‘Why not just sit back and let things fall as they may? I probably won’t be around long enough to reap the worst of the whirlwind.’

Few, even among the most fervid of remainers, would argue that…[Read more]

@geoffers

Moving the discussi0n of Halloween here, since it doesn’t have much to do with music beyond the Strictly Come Dancing connection.

Halloween, the eve of the Christian festival of All Saints/All Souls/All Hallows, has long been marked in many parts of Western Europe, and emigrants from there took it with them to the US where the…[Read more]

@geoffers

is halloween a thing in britain, too?

Increasingly so over the past three or four decades, with the importation of customs such as elaborate dressing up, usually in something spookily appropriate, and the practice of trick-or-treat. Not so much when I was growing up in the 1940s and 50s, although we did sometimes have parties in a room…[Read more]

Definitely not one for arachnophobes, especially now that they can be made to appear so realistic. We’ve come a long way since Planet of the Spiders. Like @pedant, I was particularly glad to see how the plot took into account the physiology of spiders, and the fact that there is a limit to the size which the metabolism of an insect or arthropod…[Read more]

@pedant

I’ve just realised what my issue with the coda was.

Yes, it did have a flavour of ‘Now, children, sit up and pay attention’.

On first viewing I was inclined to excuse it on the grounds that you stated; that it was information necessary for most young viewers, and perhaps some older ones unaware of the historical details, and that it was j…[Read more]

@JimTheFish

That was a very interesting take on the episode and thank you for drawing it to our attention. It is a point of view which I can understand but which is very personal and does not, I think, take into account the intention of those who created the show, to educate as well as entertain, or the basic premise that the past determines the…[Read more]

@pedant

Many thanks for the update. It looks as if you are coping extremely well so far, and all power to you. If you have a sweet tooth and biscuits are your default snack I can understand how hard it is to adjust, and our prolonged rabbiting on the subject elsewhere cannot have helped, so apologies on that score.

Disturbance of sleep patterns…[Read more]

@thane16  (puro)

I always hesitate to comment on the music in Doctor Who, having had no formal musical education worth mentioning and being all too aware that I have largely failed to remedy the deficit. What Rosa Parks’ theme brought immediately to my mind, though, was Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. Whether that was the intention I…[Read more]