[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @replies]

@missy

misunderstand what I mean

What is there to understand about small-minded racism?

 

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@blenkinsopthebrave @devilishrobby

Not really to my taste either, but I think the choice is intended to be contemporary and NOT by the new composer, whose creation they are trying to keep as secret as the Tardis design.

Also, glass ceiling getting smashed, innit?

That last bit does seem to have made the Angry Virgins very cross.

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Another teaser

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@missy @tempusfugit @thane16 @bluesqueakpip

Also, given that Othello was Moor, there’s no particular reason to suppose that he would be black in the sense that we use that term today. To Shakespeare’s “black” would refer to anyone darker than and Englishmen, at a time when sun-tanning was definitely not A Thing.

So anyone from Turkey to the Berber coast would be describes as “black”.

Obviously the solution is to cast Idris Elba and get him to do it in whiteface.

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@missy

Look in the bright side Missy. At least its not a “brown person”.

@TempusFugit

I remember hardcore fans saying they could never imagine David Tennant being replaced. Then Matt Smith ate fish fingers and custard…

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@all

Over to you. I got a slightly disappointing 25/30:

Doctor Who quiz (modern)

And a truly catastrophic 14/25 for this:

Doctor Who quiz (classic)

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@mudlark @thane16

So my newly acquired 4th edition pops some glorious snark at grammarian pedants, while accepting that the less/ fewer distinction has become A Thing That Is Generally Accepted.

However, in it’s (new in this edition) specific entry on the matter it notes that the whole thing derives from a tentative opinion of a single 18th Century grammarian.

Curiously, this is also true of the sentence-ending preposition prohibition, which is equally unfounded in actual grammar.

@whisht

While I bow to nobody in my admiration for the traditional builders’ brew, sugar is strictly optional. And for those of us newly diagnosed as diabetic, downright problematic.

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And it took the BBC the fat end of 12 hours to get a story up.

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Awesome. My birthday.

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LOL “stan pit”

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@thane16

As @mudlark says there is a lot of unnecessary fuss and no small amount of mythology about tea. Most of it is nonsense. the only truly important thing to remember is to pour the water onto the tea (whether in pot or a tea bag) before it has finished going off the boil. Everything else is a matter of personal taste.

The Space Captain Smith facebook group has a long-running obsession with tea (because a central joke of the books is that tea is the source of the British Space Empire’s moral fibre). Mostly it is fun, but I have lost count of the number of times people asserted that the “milk in first” idea stems from the need to protect early fine china tea cups from shattering. Evidently these people have never studied what ceramics are used for, and why.

Orwell’s argument was that adding milk to tea, rather than tea to milk, scorches the milk.

@stman

Every Doctor has been into space and there are countless space-based stories to enjoy. I recommend a scan of IMDB, but arguably the most famous space-based episode is Ark In Space from the 4th Doctor’s run.

From the modern era, New Earth (9th Doctor) 42 and Impossible Planet/ Stan Pit (10th) A Good Man Goes To War (11th) and Oxygen (12th) are all heavily space-based. There are certainly others than don’t come to mind, so ANY Doctor would be suitable for your artwork.

Also, The Impossible Astronaut (11th Doctor) and Hell Bent (12th) have very strong diner elements.

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@mudlark

Oh, I think the idea that it is a rule is very modern, an artefact of the age of memes and other easy aphorism. I have the 4th Edition on order now to check what current thinking – well, three years ago thinking – is. Hopefully some of the worse damage done by Burchfield will be undone.

What Fowler did – and I suspect this was more by serendipity than design – was draw a clear distinction between standard English (essentially RP for the written word) and correct English while managing to be practical and useful rather than snobbish and didactic. He was certainly tart and impatient to the point of sarcasm with what he saw as stylistic frippery, but the sheer common sense of what he wrote shines through.

Had I a time machine, I think sitting HW Fowler and George Orwell down to natter about language would be a fine afternoon. Probably with a large quantity of tea consumed (Orwell was, rightly, a milk-in-first man).

@thane16

Isn’t it a factoid?

I admire your preference for gender-neutral language.

 

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@thane16 @mudlark

Curious factette: The much touted and meme-worthy distinction between less and fewer is a modern thing. Grammatically, either is acceptable in most cases. The first edition of Fowler (1927) notes the then-new tendency to use fewer (and other words, such as smaller) where less or lesser might previously have been deployed. Gower’s (1965) second edition notes it as a modern tendency.

Burchfield’s 3rd edition (***shudder***) asserts that some uses “incorrect” where Fowler and Gower both described them as tendencies. But then Burchfield was a twat who admitted to not understanding the appeal of Fowler..

Should probably get the 4th edition.

Prof reading is for wimps.

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@thane16

THAAAAAAAANE! Your mum’s freebasing her meds again!

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@mudlark

But nobody who was taught as we were would ever write ‘could of’ instead of ‘could have’ or ‘could’ve, or fail to spot a dangling participle.

And they aren’t taught that today either, and to suggest so is (as well as being quite insulting to teachers) to ignore two fundamental changes since our day:

1. The inclusion of much more non-RP into broadcast media, delivering much more “casual” speech to the ear;

2. The explosion of social media that means people who might have written “could of” in a diary or note to a peer now do so publicly and a massive numbers.

It is much less a question of teaching and much more a question of less able or less attentive students having a platform that our less able or less attentive peers could scarcely dream off.

I suspect in due course that ‘coulda’ (as in Shoulda, Woulda ,Coulda’) will replace them all.

Fun fact: lawyers are trained not to use commas unless absolutely necessary, since they can change the legal meaning of a sentence. A very large US bank got totally screwed on a rent review because of a rogue comma and the order of 4 words in an 80 page lease.

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@ichabod

1. Moffat didn’t cast Tennant, RTD did (and had worked with Tennant before – like Chibnall with Whittaker, he went with someone he knew he could trust);

2. Moffat has stated repeatedly that the original intent was to cast someone older, but they were won over by Smith’s audition as old in a young body.

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@mudlark @janetteb

It’s an interesting point: why aren’t people now generally taught basic grammar and syntax as a matter of course?

Care is needed. Many of the grammatical truths were were taught were not, in fact, truths at all, but the consequence of 19th Century Oxbridge nobs applying Latin rules to a High Germanic language.

Be it the split infinitive, not ending a sentence with a preposition, not beginning a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’ or avoiding the double negative, while there may be many sound stylistic reasons for avoiding all of these at times, none of them are anything to do with grammar or syntax.

There is, for example, absolutely no dialect of English in which the expression “I ain’t got no bleedin’ money!” is in any way a logical statement. It is a wholly rhetorical assertion of emphasis, from the East End of London to Yorkshire. The double negative is the battle lost of grammar pedantry, but anyone who wishes to object to the split infinitive needs to read Fowler’s essay on the topic and have a long, hard word with themselves.

I have lost count of the number of times I have come across discussion of the proper way to hyphenate some turn of phrase or another, in which all of the participants entirely fail to see the wood for the trees: if you are getting all oozlumy over this, then the entire sentence needs to be redrafted to eliminate the risk of ambiguity. When this is pointed out at least one of the participants with shouts “cop out”. The person doing that has nearly always been taught English the way we were.

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@ichabod

The men, yes.  The young women, however, were doing something else (on tumblr and The Mary Sue at least) — complaining that Moffat’s female characters aren’t “feminist” *enough*.

I refer the honourable lady to the comments I made some time ago

[It can work the other way. Sometime ago I engaged with someone on the Graun, who asserted that Sorkin did not have any strong women in The West Wing. I very quickly rattled of a list of immensely powerful women in the show, include Ainsley Hayes (ref: above). “Yeah, but she’s a Republican”.
For some, women are only strong is they fulfil your expectations.]

And:

There are other sources of critique (of course) but too often they seem to boil down to “Well, that’s not how I would have written [her]” (see the West Wing caveat – same principle in action).

But also, the thing with Moffat is that he absolutely refuses to spell things out for the (to be charitable) impatient or inattentive.

 

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Apropos of nothing in particular, this is the most sublime thing you will hear any time soon:

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@TempusFugit

Greetings.

If you trace any fan site back to its beginnings you will nearly always find that they began as perfectly reasonable places where many views could be expressed in an open a collegiate way.

But then, as is the way with many online spaces, the loudmouths and blowhards have a horrible tendency to butt in with their “Capadli SUX!!” or “CLARA? UGH!!” or “This is SJW bullshit” and MOFFAT IS SOOOOOOO LAZY” and on and on and on…. What happens is that reasonable people get fed up and wander off, giving the false impression that the cynics are a majority.

They aren’t, and never have been. It’s just that decent people have better things to do with their time than argue with halfwits. They are the same empty-head muppets who would see Idris Elba being the next James Bond as a betrayal of all things British (I appreciate that may not resonate with you, but blimey, you’re English-as-a-second language is better than a lot of ours as a native language).

That is what happened on The Guardian (newspaper) discussion board and led directly to this place being formed.

So, yeah – you will find much robust discussion hear, but on the whole a low tolerance of fuckwittery.

@jimthefish

Moffat’s tribute is wonderful. Not just about the professional, but the person.

 

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We all remember how unDaffy Tennant’s Doc was.

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@mudlark

There are other sources of critique (of course) but too often they seem to boil down to “Well, that’s not how I would have written [her]” (see the West Wing caveat – same principle in action).

But also, the thing with Moffat is that he absolutely refuses to spell things out for the (to be charitable) impatient or inattentive.

Of course Clara’s story wasn’t finished on Trap Street. If the two previous iterations have ended with “Run you clever boy” then you really should know that is how you could tell when the Clara “Prime” story has ended. That’s how he rolls.

RTD’s Rose reminded me of my friend Jane from LSE. Her mother constantly told her that she would be better off on a till in Tescos than going to university. The long British tradition of not getting above your station. Her (Irish) father, on the other hand, bought her a book of poetry (proper, grown-up poetry) for her 5th birthday and it was her most treasured possession. But her mum was also the queen of passive aggression, which fucked her up good and proper.

Amy reminds me of, well pretty much my entire recent ancestry, a catalogue of abandonment (most recently indicated by some previously unknown 1st cousins and half-uncles, but that’s a whole nother yarn). Season 5 of Who is one of very few series of any show fit to stand alongside Season 5 of Buffy.

We forget that Amy got every bit the hate that Clara did.

Clara was her own woman, who travelled on her own terms (that was established with Oswin). She chose to go on the adventure with eyes open,  though probably not quite aware enough of the risks (also foreshadowed by Oswin – and imbeciles call Moffat lazy). Even though that cost her, she did not regret it for a moment. She died where she stood, and it was beautiful.

And the Angry Virgins hate that.

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@thane16 @missrori

The point that cannot be emphasised enough is that the people who complain about Moffat, using his depiction of women, use exactly the same syntax ad those who style themselves mens rights activists or incels.

That is, people who have never actually met any girls.

They sit claiming to love the show, while the entire point of it flies over their heads.

So there is Rose – a working class girl belittled by her own mum who takes wing when shown what’s over the horizon;

Martha, RTDs only true misstep. Pheromones, indeed. Bit fixed later, elsewhere;

Donna – a working class woman allowed to fly so close to the sun she had to have her wings clipped for her own protection. But sung about every night on a planet billions of light years away;

Or Amy – as compelling a study in abandonment issues as you are likely to find, but so deeply in love that when her fiancé is removed from history she still weeps for him. And wishes the Doctor back to life. And literally jumps to her death on the gamble that it will save the world and herself.

And Clara. A perfectly ordinary woman who, like many perfectly ordinary women (and men, for that matter) kept letting her compassion put off the great adventure. Who refused to be “saved” by Eleven, and indeed jumped without a moment of pause into the fire. And then accepted that “tomorrow is promised to no-one”, but insisting upon her past. A woman insisting. The shame of it.

And Bill, who even when cyberised kept her identity and made sure the Doctor knew it. And then comforted two Doctors as they faced regeneration.

And what they all have in common, but which Moffat pushed to the foreground? That they are women who had the brass-bound audacity to talk back to the Doctor.

And that is what the Angry Virgins hate about him.

 

[It can work the other way. Sometime ago I engaged with someone on the Graun, who asserted that Sorkin did not have any strong women in The West Wing. I very quickly rattled of a list of immensely powerful women in the show, include Ainsley Hayes (ref: above). “Yeah, but she’s a Republican”.

For some, women are only strong is they fulfil your expectations.]

 

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@thane16

For some reasons this reminded me of The Amateur Transplants “London Underground” song, which is upthread somewhere.

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@thane16 @missy

More likely a fluke of the angle of impact. A 1998 car isn’t significantly heavier than a modern car and things like impact absorbance zones were in common use by then. You didn’t mention whiplash, which suggests they worked as designed.

PTSD’s a fucker. Keep an eye on that. It’s sneaky. Just when you think its gone, it bites back.

 

There was a vintage and veteran car show in Olney a couple of months back (pix : here ).

I spent some time talking to a lovely chap who owned a 1960 Morris Minor 1000 that was as close to factory condition as he could get it.

Its front seats tipped forward, even though it was a four door car, because Morris didn’t bother to re-engineer from the two-door. But these seats did not lock down, so anything other than gentle braking causes them to tip.

It had no seat belts, of course, so that tipping would pitch you out through the windscreen.

It also had a shelf with a bar that gave the car lateral rigidity but which was placed perfectly to sever your legs at the knees when you were tipped out (you can see it in one of the pics).

It is a thing of beauty, but it weighs probably 30% more than my Mini, it’s ancestral descendant, and on modern roads is a death trap in all but the most cautious and knowledgable hands.

I trust that your new car has side-impact airbags and nice modern crumple-zones!

 

@mudlark

Since you mentioned 1976:

1976 and 2018 compared on a global scale:

The big difference between the heatwaves of 1976 and 2018.
June 1976: the UK was one of the warmest places relative to normal across the globe, with most areas cooler than average.
June 2018: the UK was just another warm blob in a mostly warmer than normal world.#GlobalHeatwave. pic.twitter.com/eIsj7glEiE

— Simon Lee (@SimonLeeWx) July 22, 2018

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@bluesqueakpip

(sorry – just replied in wrong thread |)

You are Truckles AICM£5.

There is literally no change in DW viewing figures that are not reflected in *every* genre of TV viewing, including the soaps, other than those with a live voting element (in fact DW has very slightly outperformed, although I doubt it is statistically significant).

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I’m just gonna leave this here: The Pandorica Opens. According the the Skeptics Guide to the Universe crew the food is excellent.

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@winston – am jealous. I have a 4 hour drive if I want to see the Dyfi ospreys.

The UK birds head for Senegal, although some have taken to stopping in southern Portugal.

I literally laughed out loud at Stormy Spaniels.

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@winston

I think the structure next to the nest is there to simulate the wild habitat at bit. They usually nest in trees, but natural nests can be a bit rickety (the first pair to breed in Wales – Glaslyn had their nest collapse. When they came back the next year the local ape descendants had done some reinforcement work). The birds can hop onto it in a single flap, so getting there doesn’t count as fledging.

The camera pole is, as you can see from Dinas’s trajectory is further away so getting there counts. The two females were a bit more impressive: Alys’s first flight was for two minutes. When I was there, Helyg’s wing flaps were noticeable more chaotic than her brother and sister, but she got there in the end. (Dyfi chicks, by tradition, are named for Welsh rivers ands lakes). The mother is new this year, after Glesni failed to return. She is named Telyn, which is Welsh for harp.

Fun historical footnote: the Dyfi platform wasn’t supposed to be there. DOP had built a new platform in what they thought to be a better position. They were just about to take this one down when Monty moved in and it immediately became a Schedule 1 Protected Site. The “new” nest is now just somewhere Monty goes when he wants to eat in peace.

Where do your ospreys over-winter?

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I suspect that the Tardis, being a time machine, knows that it can evict the Doctor go away and deal with whatever crisis prompted said eviction and then materialise in plenty of time to catch her, perhaps dropping her in the swimming pool.

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@xad4 @winston @thane16 and I’m sure others who have followed the Dyfi Ospreys. I went down on Monday on a rather dreck and dreary day but which was replete with the hope of seeing at least one of the chicks fledge. Thus I took my tripod and Sigma 150-600mm lens and wound the latter all the way out. The Observatory is a wooden structure and with a lot of excited people about, even the tripod had its limitations. Somewhere in among 257 shots, I got this 13 frame sequence. It is uncropped so the apparent movement of the poles shows how bouncy the floor is. It is the first flight of Dinas, the one male in the three chick brood. For the technically minded, f8/1/125sec iso 100.

For the technically minded, f8/1/125sec iso 100. And all the “ospreys trying to fly” images you could shake a stick at, click here.

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Lindalee has spoken so now we all know what to think

Also, it seems there is still two weeks of filming (I’m guessing, but probably just pick-ups now)

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In other news, Joss Whedon and Monica Owusu-Breen are working up a Buffy reboot for HBO: Clicky

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If you watch the ComicCon panel Chibnall gives a very clear explanation of why they are not giving anything away.

 

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After all, why are we being given so little information and so few images…?

Debonkerisation on: because this is only the first part of a campaign that won’t even kick off properly before San Diego.

Commence rebonkerisation.

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While the ARSE has been mighty on Twitter, the ZOMG!!! SO EXCITED!! GIVE ME MOAR MOAR MOAR!!!! is conspicuously mightier.

Also, we are going to see this stinger A LOT:

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This is implausibly delightful:

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@ichabod

*Applause*

Just to be clear: people alive *today* will probably – and their children will certainly – see displacement of people on a scale that makes the current refugee crisis in the Middle East look like a day trip to Disneyland.

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@wolfweed

And Cook’s sketch:

https://youtu.be/Kyos-M48B8U

 

Hmm. Don’t know why it won’t embed.

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@missy

Of course experts change their minds. They go where the evidence leads rather than sticking bull-headedly to a line of argument that has been demonstrated to be knuckle-headed drivel. Because expertise isn’t an opinion, it is a skill developed over many years and firmly rooted in evidence.

You should maybe take that lesson on board.

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For the non-UK viewers (and for that matter the UK viewers yet to see it) take the earliest opportunity you can to watch A Very English Scandal, a three-parter by RTD.

It tells the story of how the 1960s/ 70s leader of the British Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, tried to cover up a homosexual affair (which at the time would have been illegal) by hiring a someone to kill his lover. Despite being acquitted (following a horrifically partial judge’s summing up, famously lampooned by Peter Cook – check youtube) he was politically ruined. The story can only be told in this way now that he is dead.

There are, of course, some very RTD flourishes and a lead performance by Hugh Grant that may be his finest ever.

It will win loads of awards, and rightly so.

Still not convinced about the mid-1970s police driving Morris Minors, though….

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Aaaagghhhh totally failed to tag your properly above @thane16

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@thane15

If you go to the 5th floor, you will see signs saying “film crew only”. Work from there…

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So back in the day Google Street View went and maps the WHOLE of the old BBC Television centre, before it closed down.

Go to the 5th floor and there is a lovely little Who related easter egg (look for the film crew only sign and peek into the offices)….

Clicky

 

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@missy

they are making an impact on the Earth’s climate, they want to study past climate properly.

Crikey. I’ll bet the scientists never thought of that. Oh, hang on – they have. There’s a beginner or intermediate explainer for you to choose.

Thousands, if not millions of years ago, most of the Northern Hemisphere was blanketed in ice. Indeed the UK had

the odd glacier or two.

I have spent enough of my life traipsing across the glaciated landscapes of Wales and Scotland to know this (some for direct educational purposes, some ‘cos its just so damned gorgeous). It is very cool being able to explain which way the glacier was going and how I know, or how the retreat of the ice sheets diverted the Thames, meaning London grew up about 20 miles further south that it otherwise would have – that’s exactly the stuff I learned at university. I have no problem thinking on geological timescales, and nor do climate scientists.

Not a single credible climate scientist doubts that humanity’s fingerprints are all over global warming and they have the data to show it – all of which is publicly available, as are the models they use to process it.

You have strayed far, far beyond what you understand. You’re logic is not actually logic – it is non-sequitur. I can only assume you get your science from the Murdoch press.

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@missy

But the science is true whether you believe it or not. And nearly all farmers *do* believe it because they are living it.

@janetteb

Stubble burning has not been allowed in the UK since 1993, although not because of climate change (it’s impact is minimal, compared to coal and oil). It destroys nutrients, pollutes generally and, on a fairly compact industrial island, cinders can do damage electrical transmission gear. ’tis but a childhood memory for me.

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@missy

Alas, for some reason the uploader has locked his account, so it can’t be seen.

Ah!

Her ya go:

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@blenkinsopthebrave @janetteb @missy

Fun factette: some the scenes were filmed in Pasta Food’s factory in St Albans (they also provided research to “sell” the joke), which I went past on the bus from school every day. We were implausibly proud of its role in fake history (the factory moved to Norfolk in the late 80s).

And yes, that is Richard Dimbleby, one of the most revered names in British journalism – who threatened to resign if the BBC forced him to tone down his dispatches from Belsen – absolutely deadpanning it.

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@craig @jimthefish

And again, plus a couple of suspect registrations.

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