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Sun Mar 21
13 posts in the last 24 hours
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The new Doctor Who will see familiar monsters be scarier than even before, according to new showrunner Steven Moffat, and that's not even describing the new Doctor/companion relationship... Mild spoilers ahead.
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Only five? Well, I am not too outside the box, I feel:
Samuel Vimes
Granny Weatherwax
The Librarian
Leonard de Quirm
The Sweeper, danged if I remember his name (a play on Lao Tzu, isn't it?)
Big fan of Susan as well. My favorite book for straight humor is The Lost Continent, which features none of these characters, but has a joke every other line, and my favorite book(s) outright are probably Night Watch and Thief of Time.
Haven't had a chance at Unseen Academicals, yet. Not the biggest wizard fan, so I don't feel as compelled to read it as I did for Thud.
Just finished reading His Dark Materials. Pretty good although the plot frays into loose end territory by the Amber Spyglass. Was struck as well by the third appearance in recent memory of a plucky and brilliant girl heroine as the central character, and a slightly older male hero as a protector-action dude (Aenea and Raul in Endymion, and Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow in City of Ember).
In Endymion and His Dark Materials, Aenea and Lyra are also messianic characters fighting totalitarian religious authorities.
@ceti: LOVED the series. I always saw Lyra, Mrs. Coulter, and all the other strong female characters in the series as Pullman's response to Susan's fucked up treatment in Narnia.
As someone who's recently also finished reading His Dark Materials, I've been itching to ask someone this: How did you feel about Mrs. Coulter in the end?
@ceti: I loved those books. They fell into the category of "after I'm done reading them I wish I could go back in time and read them all over again for the first time".
If you're interested in a story about a plucky and brilliant girl heroine without a slightly older male hero I'd recommend the Tiffany Aching Series by Terry Prachett. They're also young adult novels, but I really like them.
@ceti: I really dug His Dark Materials, but dang, did it seem to fall apart at the end. Everything felt so anti-climactic to me. And the ending drug a bit for me, which was a bit disappointing because the previous books were so imaginative and exciting.
@matthewabel: Agreed. Terry Pratchett writes amazing characters period (I always comment on his female characters because it's so rare for anyone to write them well, but he does an amazing job with both genders).
I just love how all his characters are given depth, something you wouldn't expect in books that are described as mostly satire.
Alright, this is about to turn into a post of me gushing about Terry Prachett. Maybe I should start my own comment tread.
@matthewabel: It was kind of a surprise how anti-climatic the big Adam and Eve moment was (although I don't really know what I was expecting it to be). But I'm a huge sap sometimes, so it didn't really bother me. I kind of liked how it was something so simple rather than the usual big "I am the hero and I will do something heroic to save the world with my heroics" sequence.
@themixingitsession: I couldn't help but feel bad for her at the end (both her and Lord Asriel). Condemned to an eternity of falling in the Abyss? That's pretty rough (and kind of out-weighs any of the evil deeds she committed as far as appropriate punishment goes). I think they both redeemed themselves with their final action.
@Darklighter: Can't I just reply to all? That's what I really want, but it doesn't work that way atm... Yes to Eddie Izzard. He is a wonderful, smart and funny man. Challenging idiots and showing them up for what they are simply by being himself.
Bobbobins - far too late to be of any relevance and really, really needing to go to bed. A bit like life..... :)
Well, I've always heard that if you don't know, ask. So I'm asking:
Can someone tell me what "posts," "messages," and "favorites" on my profile page are and how to use them? I would really truly appreciate the information. Thanks
"Posts" are a page for people that have actually made a post on io9, or another Gawker site. So if you click on Annalee's name from a post, and then check her "posts" page, you can see only articles with her byline.
Favorites...You used to be able to "heart" a post, and it would show up in your "favorites" section. The article hearts have disappeared in the most recent site overhaul. I don't think you can add anything into this section anymore.
Gawker just posted biographies of the cast of the new 'Housewives of Beverly Hills' TV show and one of them is Kim Richards who starred in the Witch Mountain movies of the 70's as a child.
You don't need to speak French to appreciate how awesome this trailer is for Luc Besson's latest SF flick. A brilliant, sexy adventurer named Adèle Blanc-Sec has discovered a dinosaur egg - and now a pterodactyl threatens steampunk Paris!
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Caprica:
I was researching some graphics, and came across an article on Tauron tattoos.
And all you Sasha Roiz fans can thank me later: [www.chicagonow.com]
@Roklimber: The tricky part... getting paid. The Imagination is a neato fruit to cultivate, but goes unused and rots easily, and despite it being a premium doesn't pull down the "bio-survival units" like it should.
Niche work is hard but lovable.
@Roklimber: ...I'll give you some faux Tauron tattoos for some walkin'-around money... got any backyard fruit?
[like, literally making trades for bags of backyard fruit...]
@Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.: I'd love them. Too far you are, if memory serves? You're in Bay Area?
I'm one of those SoCal weirdees you hear about (and it's strictly henna tattoos).
Now, if you mail a crate, know any truckers...
What's the best way to recommend commenters for stardom? There are at least two people who, in my opinion and the opinion of others, have consistently shown that they deserve their stars.
I doubt that populism will work. I'm sure that Annalee, Charlie Jane and the other people in charge will be more careful than simply go with the majority. This isn't a democracy.
I still think the tag is useful, however, because they (the people in charge) surely don't read everything and may not be aware of certain star-deserving people.
Incidentally, our friend Scotland above has already created the corresponding tag for io9, here:
@Roklimber: Yesterday, I nominated 5 commenters.
Today, one of them has a star.
Coincidence? ...(almost definitely)
Gizmodo also has a tag called #trollpatrol[gizmodo.com] (a place to nominate trolls for banning.) However, in my experience io9 doesn't really suffer from this problem.
@Roklimber: It might be good to reply to one of their comments in a post, with the #starthisperson hashtag. I don't know how often that they come in here. I've seen Annalee's trail in here once before.
Also, a couple of the mods might see it too and bestow the star on their behalf. I haven't ever seen them reply in here either.
What's more amazing — the arresting loveliness of many recent SF book covers, or how different from each other they are? SFSignal asked artists and designers for their favorite recent covers. Here are a few of the ones they picked.
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Two questions that I've been meaning to ask you: did you get a chance to check out the book suggestions I made and, also, was my explanation of Abelian gauge theories reasonably understandable?
@Roklimber: I wanted to go back and copy your response into a word document so I could reread it a few times but I didn't do it at the time, ended up having a hectic week, and then couldn't find it again. Is there some way we can save things that we want to reread to our profile?
It's frustrating because, yes, I was making headway reading your explanation but now I don't know how to find the thread.
I think I was born asking "why" (no kidding, I remember a neighbor teaching me the alternative "how come" when I was five or six because I drove her crazy with "why") but chemistry and especially physics have always been difficult for me. I'm well educated but mostly through my own efforts and I think writers in those two fields rely on mathematical formulas and jargon more than people writing in other fields.
I love learning and I have always loved the sciences and I would like to have a better understanding of physics. I was very much impressed with the fact that your assignment was to teach physics to non-physics students and that you were able to respond to the challenge. So if there is any way to get back to that whole discussion, please let me know.
@mamadragon49: io9 definitely needs a way to search people's previous posts (including, of course, one's own).
I had a rough idea of how long ago those posts were made (about a week) and, given the frequency of my own posts, I estimated that those posts happened some 500 posts ago.
Then, going to
io9.com/people/Roklimber/
and clicking on 'next', at the bottom, I got this on my browser's url box:
io9.com/people/Roklimber/?start=10
(I removed the http part of the links above so that you can actually see the links, or else they would be processed by the io9 server)
Replacing the 10 with 500, I skipped all the way back to about a week ago. Then, it was a matter of clicking on 'next' until I found the posts in question. It turns out they were in the neighborhood of 570.
I'm describing the above in such detail because, in the absence of a decent search feature, it's a good trick, if you can estimate how far back to go.
Anyway, here are the links:
My answer to your "elaborate on what strange means" request: [io9.com]
My answer to your "why gravity and QM are not compatible" question, including the Abelian gauge theory and book recommendations posts (it's all in the same thread): [io9.com]
You might want to go back to the top of the page and read from the start of the threads.
Oh, and please note the corrections I made in the post following the Abelian gauge theory post. In the original post, when you get to the point of trying the rotational experiment with the two books, skip to the post following that, for the corrections. Otherwise, you'll get very confused. Sorry about that.
The ratings may have fallen during its four week run, but that didn't stop ABC's V from being one of the largest moneymakers on television last year. How good a position does that put the show in for next year?
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Yesterday, I rented and watched The Princess and the Frog, as I had not gotten the chance to see it in the theater. I wanted to know what you thought of it?
The nostalgia glass removed (I grew up with Alladin and The Lion King, so seeing a hand-drawn musical again? My god, was I happy), my opinion is that it's not the best movie Disney made, but it's a worthy instalment. My main problem with it was the villain: He is criminally underused and gets defeated before he can become a real threat.
Also, I found the love story between the two leads would have beneficiated from being a bit less subtle. There was no "A whole new world" or "Can you feel the love tonight", which was too bad.
My favorite song was Mama Odie's "Dig a little deeper". I can still sing it! The fireflies one was cool too. Oh, and Ray's my favorite character. And I loved how they called his love Evangeline, from the old Acadian story (I can't count the number of song that I've heard about her). And being billingual, a smattering of French here and there was well received!
All in all, I would say it rate close to, say, Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Very, very good, but not great. I hope they continue the trend of doing one hand-drawn movie every couple of years or so. I think one is on the slab, but I'm not sure. So your opinion on the movie?
![Click here to read Steampunk Dinosaur Madness in Luc Besson's "Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec"](http://cache-03.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2010/03/160x120_blancsec.jpg "Click here to read Steampunk Dinosaur Madness in Luc Besson's "Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec"")
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